


A Strange Dominion

by corbyinoz



Series: Hamartia [3]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-01 16:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20337094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corbyinoz/pseuds/corbyinoz
Summary: The final part of the Hamartia series. What does she want? And who has been betraying information to her? How can International Rescue function when so much has been damaged? Will Scott's desperate plan do more harm than good?Hamartia - inner characters revealed to the benefit and detriment of the people at the heart of this story - will play a part in determining whether this adventure ends well or badly.Meanwhile, the Russian connection looms large...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will definitely not make sense unless you have read Part 1 of the series, Bo Kata, and Part 2, Fire and Brimstone.

_The wind and clouds, now here, now there,_  
Hold no such strange dominion  
As woman’s cold, perverted will.  
\- John Clare 

Chapter 1

Bergen was beautiful.

Cold, clear as a crystal, but undeniably stunning.

Virgil stood at the floor to ceiling window gazing out at a mountainside that seemed festooned with rivers of sparkling lights from the top to the dark sea at its base. Then the harbour, and the city itself – lively, bright, so aesthetically pleasing it felt like it had been designed by a specific artist just for him.

The fact that he was almost rigid with unease was a cruel juxtaposition of arresting visuals and shitty content.

Their hotel was not downmarket. Just above low-range, nicely calculated to suggest mid-budget travellers but not exactly criminal class. It did little to assuage his own feelings of being utterly illicit in all his dealings here.

“Relax.” Gordon came to join him, looking with unfettered enthusiasm at the lights before him. “Everything’s going to be fine. And look how pretty it is while we wait.”

“Pretty being your ongoing and all-encompassing indicator of things being okay?”

“Oh yeah. If it’s pretty, how can it be bad?” Gordon grinned at him. “Don’t answer that.”

That was standard Gordon; light, seemingly vacuous, good-natured. Except that it wasn’t, not really. They weren’t right, none of them, and this lingering bite between them, a needling that had become sharp when once it was deliberately blunted, was just one aspect of it.

Virgil, like all of them, had been working hard since they last heard from Hamartia.

There was a traitor in their midst.

A clichéd line. Melodramatic. Maybe if he re-worded it - _ someone he knew and trusted and loved was feeding information directly to the woman who had tried to kill him_ \- it would sound less like a cheap thriller, more like a fundamental catastrophe that was tearing apart his family.

There was an image in his mind whenever he heard the word ‘family’, one that had formed years ago, quite unconsciously, and was so banal it would embarrass him if he ever told anyone about it. He could have summoned up all their hand-painted decorations on the Christmas tree, perhaps, that would have been sweet. Or that one photo of all the Tracy boys his father took; the one where Scott was scowling, and John was blank-faced, galaxies away in his head, and Gordon was lifting Alan up in a bear hug as Alan squealed with indignant delight, and he, Virgil, was sneezing so violently it contorted his face and body so that he looked like someone was using a taser on him from behind. He remembered his dad’s exasperated annoyance, his “For crying out loud, boys”. 

The desired photo did get taken, eventually, dutiful sons with uniform smiles, and a copy was placed in Tracy Industry headquarters. Virgil had a copy of the other one in his bedroom.

It would make sense for that to be his family schema, but it wasn’t. Instead, his mind summoned the mud room at the Tracy family farm. At the age of twelve he’d carefully put hand-embellished names beside the coat-hooks there, where they each hung their school bags, backpacks of assorted colours and styles. Nine year old Gordon took his down and replaced it with a plaster featuring his name badly scrawled across rockets during his brief period of space fixation (right before he discovered Aelfrida Kinniburgh’ s documentaries about the sea and lost his heart forever). At the end of the row of hooks was a hatstand where Grandma’s raincoat and Jeff’s umbrella were placed.

And that was it. Family. A golden morning light coming through the small windows beside the back door, noise coming from the full to bursting kitchen beside it, the smell of bacon and wet boots and home tied up intrinsically in it all.

Unsentimental, ridiculously pragmatic, yet until these last two months or so it gave him comfort whenever he thought of it. Now? Now, he didn’t need a psychologist to analyse the image for him; the light was gone. It was too dark to read those names so lovingly decorated; each was obscured. He knew where they were, but couldn’t see them. 

Now, it brought a swirl of nausea to his belly.

The lights for warning aircraft that were placed on top of the mountain blinked lazily. It was almost mesmerising, to watch that desultory light flicker on and off, no urgency but great meaning in its actions. Virgil sighed, and swayed forward to lean his forehead against the cool glass.

He’d gone through it again and again. He remembered the exact second when She’d mentioned the sweaters being worn by the two Russian children, Minka and Sasha. It was the same kind of ground-shifting he remembered from when She had recounted very closely the way they’d been relaxing by the rock-pool on Tracy Island. Inside, intimate knowledge. Details only someone there could know.

He thought of Grandma. Alan. John. Gordon. Each one elicited an instant denial. A sure knowledge in his bones, in the marrow of his bones, in the heart of him. Impossible. Gordon particularly had almost died at the sea base, saved by pure chance. It was unlikely that an agent would continue to provide information after something like that.  
Scott? No. It was doubtful he’d even noticed the sweaters, the state he was in during the rescue, and afterwards he was unconscious in Two’s sickbay. The relationship between him and Scott was like the one between him and Gordon; ostensibly fine, but intrinsically off-key. That natural, instinctive fit was gone. Oh, Scott understood why he hadn’t been woken, why Virgil had insisted on handling the encounter with Hamartia. He even applauded it, commended Virgil for the line he’d taken, agreed that it was the right call.

And yet… there was a fixed quality to his smile. A rehearsed sound to his words, something false and hollow, even as he nodded and clapped Virgil on the shoulder, told him he owed him one.

Could Scott be the link?

Logistically it was possible. In terms of ever believing that Scott would betray the family he’d risked his life over and over to defend – no. Absurd. Grotesque to even think about it.  
So that left the outsiders, and to even configure them in that way hurt. 

Brains? No; the direct feed from Two had been shut off throughout the Maly-K rescue as an unnecessary broadcast risk. He had no way of seeing the sweaters. And the thought of brilliant, gentle, kind Brains betraying the Tracy family was anathema. Kayo was out of touch through the rescue, and would have known nothing of the sweaters, too. Against that, she was The Hood’s niece; she had maintained that falsehood, even if it was only one of _suppressio veri_, for a long time. She was an espionage agent, used to subterfuge. If anyone could be considered a possibility, surely it was her? But she had almost died on the Nazca Plains saving Virgil’s life. Hardly the actions of someone in collusion with the person doing the killing. She’d survived, like Gordon, by chance. No, it couldn’t be Kayo.

EOS? Possible. Some kind of back door into her system, some kind of brilliance that circumvented every failsafe and firewall John’s own brilliance could concoct. It would be arrogant to think that nothing could ever be done to find a way in to her mind. It was a possibility. And yet, Virgil struggled with it. Whatever EOS’s existential reality, and he wasn’t sure he could encompass her existence in any meaningful way, Virgil had a sense of trust in whatever or whoever she was. His instinct told him that she would actively resist any such incursion. More to the point, John’s vigilance and knowledge of her would surely give warning of treachery?

Which left Lady Penelope and Parker.

And that was where Virgil’s thinking foundered, because for all that Penelope had risked her life alongside theirs, for all the wonderful work she’d done and the very good friend she’d been to International Rescue over the years – she was present at the Tracy Island rock-pool. She was there on Umnak. Hamartia had appeared at her soirees, at Penelope’s hotel opening. 

Penelope and Parker. One an aristocrat, one a criminal. 

One, apparently, deeply in love with Gordon. 

Or was that another ruse, a claim to sanctuary she could crawl into if needed. Would she play Gordon as she’d play a trump against a long run of off-suited tricks? Would she destroy his brother for her own protection? Did Hamartia have some hold on her?

Oh, he hated himself, he hated his thinking, and on some level he wondered if Gordon sensed it, if the knowledge or suspicion sharpened that needle to a blood-point?

“Gordon, I think we should go. Just go.”

“No. Stop. You’ll hurt my feelings.” His brother slapped him on the arm then wandered across to fling himself into the easy chair, a slightly ratty but still bright one that helped warm the grey Scandinavian styled room. “This is Suitcase Guy. Come on. Most Valuable Player. Blocked the tunnel. Argued with you – you! In full rescue mode. I mean, be fair, that earns him awesome points. I wouldn’t argue you in full rescue mode.”

“You argue with me all the time!”

“Yeah, but I meant – if I wasn’t in International Rescue. If you weren’t my brother. Seriously, dude, you bring those eyebrows into maximum stun, you’re scary.”

“So on the basis of his being an argumentative jerk who risked everyone else’s life…?”

“I’d say he’s worth a listen to. I mean, even with everything else- imagine the ego on this guy.”

“Oh, yeah. You are definitely making me want this meeting.”

“Come on.” Gordon’s legs swung in a way that was calculated to drive Virgil’s back up, inch by inch. “You want to know what this is about. You’re intrigued. Admit it.”

“I’m doing this because of Galina.”

“And Adele.”

“Yes, and Adele.”

“And Yuri.”

“Yes, and Yuri. Can you not?”

“Not what?”

“Just – that.” Virgil waved at his brother in a way meant to convey general disapproval.

“Sure.” Unfazed, Gordon continued swinging his legs, content it seemed to look out at the magnificent view but undoubtedly aware that his actions and attitude were causing his brother to feel something beyond the line of irritation. “So. Norway. Pretty great country. They’re doing some amazing research up under the Arctic Circle. Did I tell you Aelfrida has a contract with them to run the Eurasian Basin, up in the northwest quadrant, really do some depth work? She thinks there is a kind of orca run that cuts across the circle, lets them do a northwest passage deal which is kind of ironic considering how hard the nineteenth century dudes went to try and find one.”

“He’s late.”

“He really isn’t.”

Virgil pushed away from the window, agitated. Every instinct in his body was telling him this was a dumb idea, right when they should be figuring out the far more important question of how Hamartia was getting her information, who was helping her. He remembered Suitcase Guy all too well – the arrogance. The egotism. The pure selfishness. It didn’t even need Virgil’s gut to tell him that nothing this man brought to this meeting would outweigh his own interests, and whatever agenda a man like this had, the likelihood of it being anything worthwhile was diminishingly small.

And he couldn’t understand Gordon’s attitude. Gordon, it seemed, regarded Suitcase Guy as somehow funny. A character. _Of course, what a laugh – elevate your possessions in importance beyond the welfare of the people around you, to the point of imperilling their lives. What’s not to love?_

The fact that Gordon had survived in a spectacular fashion no doubt influenced his readiness to forgive and forget. The horror had faded; the heroism remained, and cast a golden glow over the entire episode. For Virgil, though, there remained the memory of utter loss, the acidic terror of knowing he had abandoned his little brother. Forgiveness for himself would be a while coming; forgiveness for others would have to wait in the queue.

“Did you have a pickle?” Gordon got up and circled back to the coffee table that had the remnants of their meal. “You should try the pickles. Amazing. Norwegians really know how to hardwire their veggies with vinegar. I mean, seriously yum.”

“No, I don’t need a pickle. What I need is for this jerk to turn up so we can get this done.”

A soft knock at the door. Gordon waggled his eyebrows.

“That’s impressive.” He headed for the door. “But scary. Always promise to use your powers for good, Virgil.”

He opened the door and stepped back invitingly.

“Hey. It’s you. Come on in. Um – we’re gonna get John online to run a translation of whatever you want to say – “

“That’s not necessary.”

This took Gordon aback. Which was secretly satisfying, considering how blasé he’d been about the meeting in spite of Virgil’s unease.

“You speak English?”

“Obviously.” The man put down a small briefcase, then offered his hand. “I speak nine languages, actually. Stephan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev. Please. Call me Stepa.”

Virgil lifted an eyebrow in surprise. The man in front of him was nothing like the one he’d met briefly on the ledge under the volcano of Maly-K. Now that he wasn’t covered in ash and clutching an outsize suitcase, aggressively ensuring its survival alongside his own, the man’s face was handsome, with a strong nose between large, dark eyes. His mouth was full, and quirked upwards in a way that suggested a cynical humour.

“Stepa.” Gordon was clearly somewhat wrong-footed, and Virgil took some pleasure in that. “I’m Gordon.”

“Tracy, yes, and you’re Virgil.” Stepa shook their hands. “I owe you my thanks. You saved my life. And what is rather more important, you saved my work. I thank you both, sincerely.”

“Oh, that’s – uh, that’s okay.”

“Very much okay. Now. First.” Stepa unlocked the briefcase. “I have some things for you. Here.”

He pulled out three sheets of paper. On the first was a drawing of a green blob with a large red 2 on it, dwarfed by three giant figures, two with yellow hair, the other with black.  
“This is from young Minka. A thank you. This – “ he handed over another sheet, “is from the new inhabitants of the Anderson mine.”

A photograph, showing a large group of people standing in a clearing between small huts, all raising their hands in greeting.

“Another thank you. And this is a letter from Galina. I believe she regards you as the guardian spirits of our new endeavour, and is reporting accordingly.”

“Aw. Say hi when you see her again. We should go visit, Virgil.”

“No, we most definitely should not.” Gordon was clearly charmed; Virgil was going to be a much tougher sell. “Not until they are all processed as new Canadian migrants and no one can point any fingers about snatching Russian citizens off Russian soil. We will be staying well away.”

“Yes, very wise.” Stepa looked about himself. “So. You have anything to drink?”

“Yeah, sorry. Uh – there’s beer, or vodka? I think?”

“Vodka, of course. I could hardly live up to the stereotype if I didn’t take the vodka, could I?”

I guess.” Gordon sent a clear expression of _what the fuck_ to him, and Virgil answered with a shrug. He was as ambushed by this version of Suitcase Guy as his brother.  
Stepa took the tiny bottle from the mini-bar, made a moue of disgust at the brand, then tipped the contents into a glass.

“Alright – Stepa – I agreed to this meeting with you out of respect for Galina. She insisted it was important. I don’t know why Gordon’s here – “

“For the pickles.”

“Right. He’s here for the pickles. But I have no idea why you’re here, and I would appreciate it if you would tell us the reason why we’ve all travelled a long way to have this get-together on neutral ground.”

“Fair enough.” Stepa threw back the shot of vodka, and sat down in the chair opposite Gordon. Virgil stayed standing, his arms folded. The guy had charm to burn, but Virgil would happily warm his hands in its fire before sending him on his way without an ounce of regret. “Galina is correct. It is extremely important.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of folded papers, covered in hand-written Cyrillic. “We’re here because you,” he nodded towards Gordon, “told me you last saw something like these in a submerged base full of dead Russians.”

“Gordon!”

“I did?” Gordon looked guilty, a rare but telling sight. “I don’t remember?”

“We were in the module. You saw these and said that. I have not forgotten.”

“Okay, maybe. I guess. I was kinda dealing with a lot just then.”

“You’d just nearly died thanks to a certain person’s actions,” Virgil growled.

“Well, in fairness, that tends to happen a lot. Jumping off cliffs, outta planes, the usual. Our line of work and all.” He began brightly, but as he finished, Gordon’s face shifted, losing its brightness. Virgil noticed and tucked the observation away for later reflection.

“So you know where this base is. And I wish you to take me there.”

That brought a sudden choked laugh from Virgil.

“Yeah, well. Good meeting. Thanks for playing. The answer’s no.”

Stepa sat back, hands folded in his lap, and there was the stubbornness Virgil remembered and loathed from their encounter on the ledge.

“Why?”

“Why? We don’t owe you any explanation. But I’ll give you one anyway. It’s full of radiation.”

“So? We wear hazmat suits.”

“And the GDF have declared it off-limits.”

“What does this mean in reality? A series of markers set up? Maybe sensors?” Stepa smiled, dismissive. “Are you telling me that you could not get around these?”

“We could,” Virgil said, his voice cold, “but we’ve already gambled with getting banned by the GDF for you and your people. We’re not about to start some kind of thrill-seeker tourism deal for someone like you.”

“Like me? You have no idea who I am.”

“And I’m perfectly happy to stay ignorant.”

“Okay.” Gordon was leaning forward, and Virgil was relieved to see that happy-go-lucky side of his brother’s character was gone, replaced with the cool, strategic one his brother deployed on missions. “What is so important to you that you have come all this way to try and get into the base? I’ll admit, I have wondered about the place, what they were all doing down there. And I’m thinking it’s some kind of weapon, maybe biological, and the last thing anyone needs is to go down there digging it up. International Rescue is not in the habit of helping people find better ways to hurt each other.”

“And this is why we should go. Because if we don’t go down there and get this, someone else will.”

A flicker of contempt on Gordon’s face.

“So it is a weapon.”

“No.” Stepa sat forward, matching him. “No. Far more important. It is matter transportation.”

A moment of silence, and then Virgil unfolded his arms, decision made.

“Alright. Now that is absolutely it. Meeting’s done.”

“Why?” Gordon looked intrigued. “Matter transportation? Like ‘Beam me up, Scotty’? That kind of thing.”

“No, not people. The calculations are too complex for teleporting people. It’s not possible.”

“Teleporting – for crying out loud.” Virgil’s resistance to the entire fiasco was fully realised. “That is science fiction, Gordon. It’s not possible, and this has been a monumental waste of time.”

Stepa, damn him, didn’t look in the slightest bit perturbed by Virgil’s condemnation.

“As I said, you don’t know me. You don’t know about the Mayflies either, do you?”

“I can manage without the history lesson.”

“But you’ve come all this way…” and he spread his arms, like a salesman. “Gordon wants to hear it, don’t you?”

Gordon’s glance at Virgil told him that yes, he did want some answers. Given he had almost died outside that base, and three others had paid with their lives, Virgil could begrudgingly see his point of view.

“Fine.” Virgil stopped over to the third chair and sat down in it, back rigid. “The condensed version. And when the bullshit level hits peak sci-fi crazy, I will pull the plug on this meeting and tell Galina that next time I want to hear a bed time story I’ll source it locally.”

Stepa chuckled, a sound so condescending that it was all Virgil could do not to throw something at him.

“I doubt if you will understand anything of this. But I will try. Because if we don’t then the First Responders will try again at the underwater base, and this time they might succeed.”

Nothing else could have focused Virgil’s attention and sucked all the air out of the room at the same time as those words.

“Yeah,” Gordon said thoughtfully, “I’ve always wanted to know what they were doing down there. If they got what they were after.”

Stepa nodded, responding to Gordon’s interest with intensity. “No, I don’t think they did.”

“Wait – what?” Virgil’s fists bunched on his knees. “How the hell do you know anything about the First Responders and the base?”

“Because of course I have read the GDF report. Which has a copy of your report attached.”

“How..?”

Stepa waved that away. “Galina told you. I am a genius. I don’t say this lightly. This is not ego. This is fact. So when Gordon mentioned the base, I knew I had to find the report about it. But shall I tell you why they didn’t get what they needed?”

Gordon, avid, nodded.

“Because of these,” and Stepa tapped the papers he had pulled from his jacket. “These are the love letters Irina Alexeyevna Rostova sent to her lover, Alyosha Duminy. They are beautifully written, but more than that, they are brilliantly written. Each one is a code key, and without these code keys nothing taken from the lab will make any kind of sense. No matter how clever Janet Kingsley thinks she is.”

“Who’s Janet Kingsley?”

Stepa shrugged. “Good question. Janet Kingsley. Miriam Hapschutz. Koraline Gelder. Many others. These are all names taken by the woman who is the mastermind of the First Responders criminal team.”

“And who is Irina Alexeyevna Rostova?”

“Yes, good.” Stepa nodded his approval at Gordon. “This is the true question. In the West she is barely known. In Russia, she is less than that – disappeared. Removed from history. Stalin did that. He could make all traces of a person vanish – not just their body, but their work, their footprints. I am a physicist, and if you spoke to your Brains, he would know my work. I am the world’s most brilliant theoretician in quantum physics.”

“And so modest with it,” Virgil muttered.

“What is the point of modesty? There are perhaps three people in the entire world that can understand my work. This is fact.”

“Okay. Point taken. Go on. Stalin disappeared someone…”

“He disappeared millions, but that is not my point. This one. This Irina Alexeyevna Rostova. Perhaps after I tell you that there are three people in the world who can think at my level you might begin to understand me when I say that she was so far beyond me it is as if a child spoke to a professor.”

That was unexpected. Stepa saw their reactions and nodded.

“She was our Einstein. She made leaps of logic that were only paralleled by Newton, Einstein, Annie Okijba, Huei-Tse. She surpassed them all, in some ways. And her work, and her person, were buried, thanks to one monster’s paranoia.”

“So how do you know about her?” Gordon was clearly intrigued.

“Because of these.” Stepa tapped the papers again. “I found them. I was working at Moscow University, investigating some early theoretical work that I felt might provide a light on a problem I was completing. In a box, mis-catalogued and forgotten, I found these papers and half a dozen others written by Irina Alexeyevna. The papers are incomplete. But there is enough there to change everything we thought we knew about quantum physics. Had she lived, had her work been disseminated, the world would be centuries ahead in terms of space travel, everything.”

“Wow.” 

“You said these were love letters?” Virgil found he was caught up in Stepa’s story despite himself.

“Yes. And the thing is, she was writing at a time when politics was deadly. Three of the papers in the box were written as straightforward science papers, and these told me of her genius. In one alone there were insights I had spent my career struggling towards, and she so elegantly… ah. The other half were in code. I reasoned that the love letters were included for a purpose, and because I am brilliant I was able to make the connection between the letters and the papers. With the love letters in hand, it is possible to de-code the papers.”

“And these papers,” Virgil said, his scepticism clear, “they tell you how to instantaneously transport matter?”

“What do you understand of these things?”

“Not much. I’m an engineer, not a physicist.”

Stepa made a wry face. “Perhaps I can explain as much as you need. The problem has always been the need to reduce energy to a zero-point fluctuation of the field, and then extract it from another fluctuation at another place. Such fluctuations are unstable. Energy decreases in the measurement region and increases in the energy extraction region, and no one has found a way to equalise this. The impossibility was always the measurement of the qubit. The measurement of A must have the same measurement as B, but the energy fluctuation doesn’t allow this.”

“I’m following so far.” Virgil glanced at Gordon, who looked like he had the beginnings of a headache.

“There was no physical process that uses a qubit in an unknown state in order to prepare two qubits in the same state. Could not be done. But she foresaw parametric down-conversion. The two ‘down-conversion’ photons emerge as independent beams with orthogonal polarizations. This creates a polarization-energised two photon state. For a time we used mode-locked TiSaphire lasers to create a pulsed down conversion, but Irina Alexeyevna Rostova looked beyond that, saw it would never work. We only abandoned that idea in 2031, but she – “ Stepa stopped. “There really is no point in continuing, is there?”

”None whatsoever,” Gordon said, solemnly.

“Can you imagine, then, someone writing of fusion engines, not invented until 2051, in 1951? Exactly a century before? And then writing of what would come after them? This is what Irina did.”

“Wow. That would be – yeah, that really would be something.” Gordon nodded. “So all this laser sapphire and polarization stuff - did you publish it?” 

“No, Gordon, I did not. I spent years searching for more of her work, and I found it; papers handed down by her colleagues, kept in their families as oddities that were to be saved, though they did not know why. Other papers in other university storages, some digitalised, none of it recognised as anything but gibberish for those who lacked the key.”

“But why didn’t you ask people to come forward? Tell her story, get people to look for it themselves?”

“Because of what she was working on. Matter teleportation. It is the challenge we have never overcome. Her work takes us past the stumbling blocks that have existed for centuries.”

“So why..?”

“Think of this.” Stepa sat forward even further, his voice low and urgent. “What could be done with the person who has this knowledge? How could it be used?”

Gordon frowned. “We could get supplies to people who were cut off by floods. Instantly transport medicine. We could save energy – I mean, if the process does save energy – by transporting goods anywhere around the world.”

“Ah. Yes. You see, you are thinking as a humanitarian. As someone who would use power to help others. Think for a minute what an unscrupulous leader could do with it.”

“Weaponise it? You mean – send a bomb wherever they wanted?”

“Exactly. I did my work in secret because when I uncovered the entire process I wanted to be sure there were protocols in place to prevent its misuse.”

Virgil’s eyes went wide. “Wait, so - _this is what Hamartia is after?”_

Stepa gave a soft snort. “Of course! She visited me, as Janet Shipley, back at the university. My efforts must have caught her attention. She never asked me directly, but I understood quickly what she was digging for. I confirmed it afterwards when I asked colleagues at every other physics department in Russia – she had not contacted anyone else. She is one of the three who is operating on my level, by the way. If this woman gets hold of the Rostova papers and cracks the code, she could hold the world to ransom.” 

There was silence in the room as each one absorbed that thought. 

Far below them a large ship slid gracefully into the harbour, its lights sparkling against the black water. For a moment Virgil thought of a world where Hamartia could transport a bomb into its hold as carelessly as tapping a button. It brought the outside chill deep into his stomach. 

“And this is why I need to go down there,” Stepa continued. “Your report said that cabinets in the first chamber were disturbed, but that you did not think she had gone below, to the second room.”

“The one with all the dead people. Yeah. I was first through there.”

“It’s likely that this is where the key work was stored.” Stepa spread his hands in appeal. “I don’t think she can break the code. I think – I hope – right now she is being driven to despair trying to do so, but with a key as random as love letters I don’t think it is possible for her to achieve this. And Irina was brilliant – she wrote in colloquialisms. In Stalin’s Russia, things were not said directly. So, they might use a phrase saying, “There will always be bread.” To a Westerner, this is a statement. To a Russian in 1950s Moscow, it is ironic. It meant the opposite. So she uses this, and the code is reversed for two lines. It is so complex. She uses mathematical code and she uses word games and she uses the love letters. One can be broken perhaps, but the chances of a non-Russian figuring all three are almost impossible. Still. Another key might exist in that other chamber. More complete workings of her theorem, developments beyond what I have in my possession now. These may not be coded. We cannot let Shipley have these. We cannot take the risk.”  


“Wait.” A memory came to Virgil, sharp with the tang of re-lived fear. “You said, about your suitcase – on the ledge, you said this is the reason why you were here? Your work?”  


“Yes.” Stepa gave him a direct look. “I also said imagine what an unscrupulous leader could do with this.” He shrugged. “Putin got wind of my hidden research. The Mayflies? We weren’t rebels. That is the story Moscow gave. We were the physics department of Moscow University, held to ransom in order to extract my research for the government. We had word of mass arrests, a friend in government warned us. Together, we agreed we could not destroy the work. It is too important for humanity. We agreed that it was vital that this work should be given to the World Council, and only when safeguards were in place to stop its misuse. So we took the work and we fled – all the professors, research assistants, their spouses, their grandparents, children. And we hid beneath a volcano.”

“So you all did risk everything for what was in the suitcase.” Gordon’s face was unreadable. 

Stepa nodded, slowly. “Yes. Because it is more important than any of us. Galina would not leave half her people to die. I would have. But not for me. For humanity. I would have given you the suitcase, if it came to that.”

“Kinda cold-blooded,” said Virgil evenly. 

The Russian shrugged. “People come and go. Knowledge, science, this remains. A hundred years from now we will be gone, but this knowledge could still be making an impact on others’ lives. And now we must continue with the journey. We must make sure that the woman you call Hamartia does not get hold of Irina Alexeyevna’s work. We must go to the undersea base and find all we can.” 

“Okay. Okay. But there’s something we need to discuss first.” Virgil and Stepa both looked to Gordon. “When we were in the – the tunnels, I don’t know, whatever you lived in, all you would do was swear at me. In Russian. I mean, I didn’t know it was swearing, exactly, but I got the message. Here’s the thing.” His voice had now dropped all of its surf-boy casualness and held nothing but the razor-sharp reasoning and discipline hard-won in service. “You decided to play a game with me even when we were about to be incinerated by a volcanic eruption. You took the time to fake me out while I was trying to rescue you. That takes some doing. It makes me wonder what kind of person you are. And, just so we’re clear, the wondering is not in a good way."

Stepa nodded. 

“Yes. That is fair. But take a minute to consider it from my point of view. I didn’t know who you were or where you were from. The life and work of a scientist can be very narrowly-focused – I had heard of International Rescue, maybe, but seen nothing. I did not recognise you. All I saw was someone in uniform suddenly appearing and telling me what I should do.” 

“You had to know I wasn’t Russian forces.” 

“Perhaps. Gordon, you must understand, we had lived for months under sentence of death, and at that moment it seemed like a different sort of death was imminent. Forgive me if I didn’t immediately decide you were a force for good.” 

“Alright.” Virgil had waited patiently, but his dislike had not disappeared under Stepa’s charm offensive, and now was clear in his tone. “I grant you that. I have no issue with you distrusting Gordon when you first saw him. But the question is whether or not we can trust you, now. This underwater base is dangerous. Accessing it against GDF approval is risky. In my book, someone who doesn’t trust others is generally someone not worthy of trust themselves. And we’re gonna need to trust you if we’re going down into that base.”  


“Perhaps,” Stepa said again. “Trust is not something won easily. Whether you trust me or not, these facts remain as I have told them to you. If you don’t trust me, think of Galina. She urged this meeting. Does she strike you as a woman who would risk everything for something unworthy?”

Virgil looked to Gordon. His younger brother looked thoughtful, and when he realised Virgil was watching, he gave a tiny shrug.

“Feels like unfinished business,” he said.

Virgil sighed. The arguments were compelling. Against them stood the need to stay in the GDF’s good books, the need to keep people safely away from a hazardous environment, and the fact that such a mission would sorely try a leader of International Rescue who was stretched beyond tight already.

Finally, he closed his eyes.

“Okay. You’re right – it might be the chance to get ahead of Hamartia. It might be worth the risk. But I’m gonna need you to convince Brains first, Stepa. I’m gonna need you to show enough of this science to someone who understands it who can say that it makes a credible case.” He finally summoned up a dark smile. “And Gordon? You get to tell Scott.”


	2. Tomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon, Virgil and Stepa head back to the underwater lab - to look for some kind of extraordinary possibility. But what will a second encounter with the Cold War dead reveal for them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very sorry for the delay - working life has been demanding.
> 
> And my kindest thoughts and hopes for those in the paths of bushfires in NSW and Qld, and Dorian in the Bahamas and the US. Stay safe, everyone.

It was weird being back here again.

The existing light was almost completely depleted now, a state Gordon had foreseen and countered with a large portable light he set up in the first area, flooding it with brilliant white illumination. It didn’t make the abandoned space look any less desolate.

The fact they’d come at all was due to one phone call between Stepa and Brains that the Russian had assured them would take ten minutes. Two hours later an increasingly appalled Gordon had been forced to endure listening to the kind of mutual mental masturbation that resulted in multiple orgasmic “Yes! Yes! Yes” sounds from Brains that he could never scrub from his mind.

“You must go there!” Brains cried, in between losing his not inconsiderable shit over such obscure scientific gobbledy-gook that even Stepa looked occasionally nonplussed.

“We’ll just have to clear it with Scott,” Virgil said, at which point Grandma told them, grumpily, that Scott had taken himself off in Thunderbird One, told them be wouldn’t be back for a week, and had chosen not to disclose a single flight plan. Grandma’s opinion was that if protocol could be so casually tossed aside by Scott, of all people, they were all going to hell in a hand basket, and if they wanted to play around in condemned undersea bases she wasn’t going to stop them.

Tracy 1 brought them back to the island for a few hours’ sleep. At least, that’s what Virgil and Gordon got. When Gordon finished his morning swim and went downstairs at a little after 0600, he found Stepa and Brains, several dirty coffee cups and no sign that either of them had stopped talking since arrival.

Now, however, Stepa was silent. 

The eeriness of the place hadn’t changed. Gordon remembered that all too well; the spookiness he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge last time, the otherworldly sense of time trapped and forgotten. All these banks of filing cabinets salted shut, with faded Russian writing labelling each one. The crusted-over lights, thick metal circling them in a way that was over a century out of date. The spot against the wall where Gordon had first knelt to help a woman in an almost unconscious state, nothing but concern in his heart, nothing but evil in hers. He remembered, too, the sudden revulsion he felt as he held her, how he’d chided himself for it and rationalised it away.

“Next time I’m listening to my gut,” he muttered.

“In your case, I dread to think what it would say.” And here was the biggest difference from the last visit; Virgil, standing strong in the centre of the room, hands on his hips, daring the place to do its worst. The forthrightness of him, his foursquare solidity, was doing all kinds of good things for Gordon’s nascent heebie-jeebies. They might not be seeing eye-to-eye just now – and wouldn’t, not until Virgil dropped any hint that his Penelope was in any way involved with Hamartia, because that was unacceptable, totally beyond the pale, and downright fucking _rude_ to even flirt with the remotest scintilla of the barest hint of a thought of it – but Gordon was honest enough with himself to admit it felt so much better to have the solid goodness of Virgil by his side.

“Alan? Can you still read us?”

“Yeah. I think the boost Brains installed is working.”

“Once he knew what to compensate for…” Virgil strode over to one of the cabinets and gave it a not so gentle kick. “Is this what we’re after, Stepa?”

Stepa pulled hard at one drawer and it jerked open to reveal emptiness.

“Not here, I think. You were in another room?” This to Gordon, who nodded. “Hamartia is likely to have taken what she wanted from here. In your report, you mentioned a bag?”

“Don’t remind me.” Gordon groaned. “She had a bag alright. Whatever she got from here, plus the pressure bomb, plus the device that screwed with our systems and made the personnel numbers out. And I helped her carry it.”

“You can’t second guess yourself,” Virgil said, gently. “We’ve never encountered anyone like her. And hopefully, never will again.”

“Yeah. I guess. Anyway, the other room is over here.” Gordon led them to the far wall and the other door. As expected, the months since the last visit had allowed the rust to re-connect, meaning his first pull at it resulted in not much in terms of opening. A quick spray from the lubricant and it swung open easily to reveal the dark drop beyond.

Virgil stuck his head through.

“Huh. What’s that down there?”

He was looking at the large circular cover that blocked off further access, a good five meters below where they stood.

“My guess? A sealed off section that we probably don’t want to open and can’t get to anyway because the pulley’s out of commission.” Gordon sent his light upward to where chains hung limp and unattached. “If we need to get into it, we’re gonna need your exo-suit.”

“No.” Stepa shouldered forward, impatient in his hazmat suit. “We need to see the other room.”

Right. The one full of skeletons, all in their uniforms, all slumped as if in sudden rest. The tufts of hair still clinging to skulls. The fingers still bent to clutch long-dried pens. (Fountain-pens, for crying out loud. The sheer incongruity of the everyday technology they were using juxtaposed against the scale of the work they were undertaking was astonishing.)

Gordon didn’t like to think of himself as a coward – in fact, on any objective measure, he knew he wasn’t – but the thought of going back into that impromptu tomb chilled him.  
So, typically, he squeezed past the other two and began the climb first, ignoring Virgil’s instinctive word of warning.

“The steps are sound,” he called back up to them. He saw Virgil make an ‘after you’ gesture to Stepa, and approved the reasoning. He couldn’t quite bring himself to trust the Russian, either.

He found the ledge quickly, and had the door lubricated and ready to open by the time the other two joined him.

“Open it,” said Stepa, abruptly, and really, he had no excuse to delay things. But he took a moment to send the Russian a glare. 

“I know you’re in a hurry to see what’s going on here, but just remember – these are people. We need to be respectful.”

Stepa nodded, brisk, and Gordon suspected he hadn’t heard a thing he’d just said, but he saw Virgil’s little smile of approval. Yeah. Big brother got it.

He opened the door and stepped through, lifting his flashlight to illuminate the room.

Even Stepa took in a deep breath.

It was as solemn and as macabre as Gordon remembered it.

Bodies slumped in seats – uniforms held in shape by the bones revealed so cruelly at the wrist and neck. Crumpled clothes and bared skeletons against the wall where the owners once slid down as unconsciousness claimed them. There was no sign of panic, no indication that they knew their fate. Gordon was glad about that, however futile the sentiment. Death would have come gently and inexorably.

He was aware of Stepa pushing past him, heading straight for the cabinets that lined the walls. 

“Wait.” Virgil joined them, grabbing Stepa’s sleeve. “Let me do a quick sit-rep first. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

“But he has already come down here without harm!” Stepa objected.

“I didn’t go across to that far wall,” said Gordon. “Only came in a few feet. Took a photo of this guy and that was about it.”

“Let me check it out,” Virgil said, firmly. “It will only take a few minutes.”

Muttering, Stepa acquiesced, and Virgil carefully moved forward, reading the atmosphere through his scanner. “Thunderbird Two, you picking up anything here?”

“No,” came Alan’s voice. “I mean, radiation levels up the wazoo. Lots of hydrogen in the air, too. And caesium and thallium. Lot of lead.”

“Yeah, I’m reading that. Structural issues?”

“No. Looks solid.”

Virgil turned slowly, meter held up, taking the measure of the place. Something crunched beneath his boot. He looked down, and made a face.

“Aw, hell. Watch where you step, you two.” He bent down to lift the hand that had dropped from an arm and placed it next to the body in the nearest seat, straightening its now broken fingers.

“It’s alright?” Stepa was bustling forward before Virgil had even answered, but Gordon’s equipment was telling him the same story. The air was deadly, but apart from that, it was safe to explore.

“Do we know if Irina is down here?” Gordon waved his hand towards the skeletons that filled the room. “Should we look for her?”

“Yes, yes,” said Stepa, but he was already at the filing cabinets, pulling at them. Less exposed down here, they opened clumsily but without the resistance of the cabinets in the chamber above. 

“So what would her name look like?”

“What?”

“In Cyrillic. What would Rostova look like?”

Stepa was busily rifling through the pages he had uncovered, scanning each one quickly with a digital recorder, sometimes stopping to read before going to the next, almost feverish in his appetite for their knowledge.

“We’ve lost him,” Virgil said, drily. “Alan? Can you check for us what Rostova would look like in the Cyrillic alphabet?”

“Uh – sure thing.” A delay, then, “Okay, so John says it would look like P-O-C-T-O-B-A.”

“Thanks, Al.”

“Remember, guys, you’ve only got thirty minutes down there. That level of contamination is a challenge for any suit, even ours.”

“Acknowledged.” 

“So.” Gordon tried to keep his voice upbeat, but the general sadness of the room and the mortuary nature of their task defeated even him. “Guess we go looking at name badges.”

Virgil looked about him, and even his voice sounded more hushed than usual. “Guess we do.” 

A rattle, and another cabinet was opened. The sound was jarring in the tombed silence of the chamber.

Gingerly, Gordon reached for the nearest uniform and lifted the shoulder so that he could read the name preserved on the chest. Lots of strange letters, some he could recognise, nothing like Poctoba. He took an image, gently let the shoulder back down, and moved to the next.

He wasn’t sure why they were searching for her, exactly. It just felt right. Someone as extraordinary as Irina should be found and remembered. But his democratic heart told him that each of these sad remains deserved the same. There were young lives here, young hopes lost, young dreams and fears and laughter and love gone, sacrificed to a Molloch that stayed hidden and un-memorialised. It hurt him, somehow. He remembered thinking about his own death, as he drifted around a headland towards violent men who would almost certainly try to kill him, and feeling the pang of grief at thinking his death would be unknown, a constant source of pain for his family. That he would be lamented, but not honoured, because no one would know what he had given, what he had overcome. These young Russian scientists had suffered the fate he’d avoided, and the thought of long gone and far distant families mourning them without understanding just worked its melancholia into his bloodstream.

He took image after image of name badges, respectfully rearranging limbs as he did so, every action a quiet word of sorry to the unhearing dead.

“You found anything?” Virgil called to him, but his voice was kept low, hushed. 

“Not Irina.”

A clatter, as another cabinet was pushed closed, and Stepa started on the third.

Gordon worked his way closer to where Virgil was carefully lifting another shirt to take another name.

“This place give you the creeps at all?” he said, _sotto voce_. Virgil gave a soft snort.

“I wouldn’t pick it as a vacation spot.” He looked at Gordon quizzically. “You know their families aren’t going to be still looking for these guys. It’s too long ago.”

“Maybe. I dunno.” Gordon wriggled his shoulders, looking around at the shadows in the far edges of the room, at the neatly arranged desks and dead lighting. “I think some mysteries stay in a family for a long time.”

Their gazes met, then, sharing the mystery that united them in grief and unanswered questions.

“Yeah,” Virgil said, softly. “Well, I’ve done this side. Unless you found her, she’s not here.”

The last cabinet drawer slammed shut, and Stepa straightened up.

“There must be more,” he announced. “I have these notes, good, but there must have been equipment, a laboratory.”

“Maybe under that sealed area?” Gordon jerked a thumb back towards the door. “But like I said, we don’t have the machinery down here to get into it.”

“And it’s not something we would do without a lot more reconnaissance,” Virgil said, firmly. “If it’s sealed off, there’s a reason, and we’re looking at about thirty good reasons to keep it sealed right here.”

“Perhaps,” muttered Stepa, “but I doubt it. It would need to be more easily accessible. More adjacent to the work space. It would need to – ah!”

Triumphantly, he pushed aside a skeletal corpse that had collapsed sideways from its chair on to the floor. Gordon and Virgil crowded around him to look down at a hatchway, once obscured, now clearly in the centre of the room.

“See? Yes. This is where the work would be done,” Stepa said. He bent to open it.

“Whoa, whoa. Not so fast.” Virgil pulled him back. “We have no clue what’s down there. Let us do some readings, at least.”

Gordon promptly held up his meter. The readings were higher than the room generally, but not so much that it suggested complete avoidance.

“I think we can risk it,” he said to Virgil. “We’ve come all this way – be a shame to miss the secret vault of goodies.”

With a sigh, Virgil acquiesced. Gordon nodded to Stepa, who positioned himself across on the other side of the trapdoor, and together they twisted the dog and lifted the hatchway for the first time in over a hundred years.

At once, seawater surged up through the opening, rising to cover their feet in a matter of seconds.

“Close it!” snapped Virgil, but Gordon raised his hand.

“No, we should be okay. This should equalise pretty quickly.” Even as he said it, the water level reached the tops of their boots and seemed to settle there. The water was dark, and just by looking at it, Gordon could tell it was lifeless and dank.

Probably stank to high hell.

He and Stepa trained their lights on it. At first the ripples reflected the light, but as the water level calmed, they could see a few feet down. Nothing was illuminated.

Stepa’s fists clenched and unclenched.

“This is it.” He stared downwards, trying to pierce the water with his gaze. “You have to go down there.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” Virgil unhooked his backpack, rummaged within. “Not till we send a probe down. Gordon, you got the monitor?”

“Sure have.” He, too, reached into his backpack and produced the small hand-held monitor that would take the probe’s feed. “Send it in, Virge.”

Carefully, Virgil fed the probe’s camera on its articulated metal line downwards. Stepa came over to join Gordon, watching avidly, and even as Gordon checked the screen he had to acknowledge that Stepa was quick on the uptake; he moved slowly so as not to stir up the century’s worth of sediment in the water any further than it had.

“Look!” Stepa point at the monitor. “Look! Look what she has made. Can we salvage this?”

A laboratory full of equipment lay revealed before them, but Stepa’s focus was on one machine, secured to the central bench, a strange looking contraption that reminded Gordon vaguely of an octopus with an enlarged, sharpened beak.

“It’s not too large, Virgil. We probably can bring it up.”

“If we can do it in fifteen minutes, sure. And that’s _if_ you want to go down there.” Virgil gave a shudder. “Nothing I’d be in a hurry to do.”

The water did look vaguely sinister, and the thought came to Gordon that there might be more death down there. Might be Irina herself, rotting by her own creation. As much as he admired what she had done, the thought of bumping into her…

“Brrr. Yeah, okay, if we’re doing this, we need to go now. Stepa? Nothing’s gonna go boom if I try and handle it, is it?”

“No. I can assure you. These machines, these chemicals are inert.”

“But something killed everybody,” Virgil said, stubbornly. Stepa shrugged.

“They were using plutonium photons. At the time, everything radioactive was considered better. The way of the future. Irina didn’t like it; in her writings she speaks of stupid decisions and a fixation on the West, the Bomb. If they had a plutonium leak, they probably would have had an alarm system for it to warn them. They more than likely died of a lack of oxygen. Trust me, Soviet Russia cut costs where it could. An atomic leak would have attracted attention; basic care for the air system could be – cut on the corners?”

“That’s likely.” Gordon dropped his backpack to one side, and lowered himself until he sat on the edge, a small cutting tool in hand. “Alright. Keep the feed going, Virgil, in case…”

“In case there’s anything in there you should be warned about?” Virgil said, and Gordon was grateful for the grave way he said it. He might tease him later; but here, in this abandoned laboratory turned mausoleum, he had Gordon’s back.

“Yeah. That. Okay, I’m in.”

Ordinarily, immersing his body in water gave him nothing but pleasure. This time, however, the setting, the water quality, and the task all combined to have him wanting it over as quickly as possible. He slid carefully in, seeing the sediment that had been raised by the inrush of water swirling about him as he dropped beneath the surface.

His light showed him the machine. Beyond that, more open doorways, black apertures to unknowable underwater hallways and rooms and laboratories. Perhaps dormitories, cafeterias. Four openings, four black maws gaping at him, and he shook his head as he drifted slowly down to where the machine waited. He looked about him quickly; there were no remains that he could see. The thought of them bobbing in unexpected currents just inside the doorways made him shiver.

He’d get Stepa’s machine for him. But there was no way he was exploring further.

Slowly, trying not send any of the inches of sediment up in a flurry, he reached for the bolts keeping the equipment attached to the bench and turned them. He racked up the torque on the ratchet head, and the bolt popped off suddenly, rusted almost through. Another and another, and another, and when he went to lift the machine, it was surprisingly light. He hoped it wasn’t so hollowed with rust that it would be useless to Stepa and Brains. He used every twisting body trick he knew from years of swimming to gain momentum without pushing off from the floor, with the inevitable swirl of sediment that would accompany it. It was harder than he expected, and it was with difficulty that he finally breached the surface and brought the machine with him, struggling to lift it above the lip of the trapdoor. Virgil bent to grasp it, take it from him.

“This what you wanted?” Virgil said to Stepa, but there was no need for answer. Stepa’s eyes, engulfing his face, told their own story.

That should have been that; Gordon should be hoisting himself out of the dead water, the water with no organisms, no life, flickering within. He almost did it, his hands resting on the edge, just a boost upwards required; and yet, he hesitated.

That nagging curiosity that had urged him on all his life was stirring in him.

How freaking inconvenient.

The fact was, Irina Alexeyevna and her story of heroic brilliance had caught him. The thought of abandoning her, as Stalin and the whole of Soviet Russia had abandoned her, the thought of leaving her unfound and unmourned down here in the black sludge, bothered him. 

The floating bodies and their ghoulish treats would just have to deal.

“Uh, Virgil? Maybe I should check out the rest of this place while I’m here?”

“Really? You think that’s necessary?” Virgil, bless his steadiness, was not so much fazed by the question as simply working it through in a practical sense. “You’ve only got ten minutes left, allowing for five to make it back out through the airlock.”

“Yeah. I mean, when are we gonna be back to this place? Just a quick swing through the rooms down here.”

“Knock yourself out. Or, you know, don’t.”

And the fact that Gordon understood what the hell Virgil was saying went a fair way to demonstrating that they might be out of sync in some ways but the old team was still working on some other level – the one that mattered.

He gave a thumbs up and slipped back down under water.

Thinking strategically helped him ignore the fear. To get the maximum benefit from his limited search time he would have to be methodical and efficient. He swam straight for the first opening, his light revealing nothing past the lintel until he pushed through it.

Once in he saw that it was a short hallway, leading to a large, cantilevered hatch with a dog, the round opening mechanism. His guess was that it led down to the lower level or levels, and there was no time to explore those. Quickly he spun about and headed for the second opening.

This one was a sadder sight. A row of doors, with glass windows inset, and the first one he shone his light through revealed bunk beds lining the walls. This was a dormitory. Few personal touches survived, but here and there were tattered remnants on the walls – of photographs, of pictures from home. Pinups, maybe? It reminded him so much of a WASP sub that he could people it in his imagination without even trying; young men like Yuri and Arkady, young women like Galina, making do with their limited life underwater because they believed in their purpose and each other, making a home under the waves far from their real ones.

He could see no skeletons lying in the bunks, and for that, he was grateful.

The other four doorways down this darkened corridor revealed similar dorms, no remains. He checked carefully, then hurried out of that and to the next doorway.

Another long corridor. Another dark doorway immediately to his left and he swam through it to find the cafeteria. Rows of tables and chairs, and in one corner, plates and cups still on the table. Gordon’s quick mind gave him a reason, and with heavy heart he swam across the tops of the tables, leaving little eddies of sediment behind him. As he suspected, there were three piles of bones by their last meal, and as he gently cleared the sediment from their heavily embroidered name badges in order to record them he felt a growing sense of sorrow. This could have been him and his friends, back in his days as a submariner. Laughing at a joke together as they grabbed a quick snack between shifts, maybe, or bitching about the duty roster, the XO, the lack of variety in the menu.

He left the three and swam to the room at the back which he rightly predicted to be the kitchen. There were more remains here, six of them, and he dutifully got their names in the cramped space before scooting back over the tables and chairs to the corridor outside.

One last doorway. This led to a similar short hallway as the first, but with the difference that at the end was an office, with a title on the door. He took an image of it, then pushed it open.

The office was empty. But as he flashed his light around the room he saw something that made his heart thump a little faster than it already was.

A picture lay on the floor, its hanging obviously rotted through. On the wall where it once was displayed was a small safe; not a large, heavy one but something more like a glorified security box, inset in the wall. Gordon hurried over to it.

“Thunderbird Two? You receiving me?”

A pause, then Alan’s voice came through, distorted but audible.

“Yeah, just. What do you need, Gordon?”

Gordon tapped at his wrist communicator.

“Alan, I’m sending through readings from this water. I need Brains to take a look, tell me if it’s safe to use my laser cutter down here.”

“FAB. I’ve got it, sending now.”

Waiting in this macabre underwater tomb was going to be hard, so he turned about to see if there was anything else he could do while in limbo. It occurred to him to check the desk for a name, but there was nothing on it except the rotting remains of files. At the first touch they disintegrated into sludge. There was a cabinet in the corner, but it was clearly not watertight; with little hope of finding anything useful, Gordon pulled open the top drawer, finding nothing but swirls of gooey sediment rising into his face. He felt through the drawer, but there was nothing left of whatever it contained a hundred years ago. Doggedly he checked each one, until at the bottom one he was rewarded; a small lockbox, rusted at the edges but seemingly intact. He pulled that out with a vague sense of triumph.

“Gordon? You receiving?”

“Yeah, Al, go ahead.”

“Brains says it should be fine. Not to use the laser in the chambers above, there’s way too much hydrogen, but this water is inert.”

“Understood. Thanks, Al.”

Quickly he returned to the security box. He needed to calibrate this carefully; he didn’t want to pierce the hull, but he reasoned that the inset wouldn’t go beyond the hull anyway. He lined up the laser, and got to work.

It took only a few seconds until he could jiggle the security box clear. The moment he did, he felt something; a shudder, as though he’d taken something vital from a body and it was reacting to the robbery. Startled, he spun around, setting off more sediment so that whirls of it rose before him, forming and re-forming into shapes that his over-worked imagination had no difficulty in transforming into zombie Russians, rebuking him.

Ridiculous. He was ridiculous.

Hell, this whole mission was ridiculous.

“Screw this,” he muttered, and burst through the goo, heading out the doorway and back towards the lone square of light above. 

To find Virgil reaching a hand down, those dark eyes lit with concern.

“Find anything fun?” he said, helping to take each of Gordon’s treasures from him. “Wow. Looks like you did.”

“Maybe.” Gordon pulled himself up and out onto the wet floor. “Where’s Stepa?”

“I sent him ahead to save time. He’s got that machine of yours at the airlock. Had enough?”

“Oh yeah. Russian Zombie Funland is not the vacation I’ll be choosing next year.”

“Zombies?”

“Eh.” Gordon got to his feet. “Just more remains, really.”

Virgil put an arm on his, steadying.

“That can’t have been fun.”

“Didn’t find Irina.” He didn’t dismiss the sympathy that was clearly apparent in Virgil’s actions, but he didn’t lean into it. To his own surprise he found his feelings were too close to the surface to handle anything that indulged them. “But found some others.”

“Yeah.” Virgil dropped his hand, regarded him. “Nothing good about that.”

“Except maybe some families that were always wondering get some kind of answers? I don’t know.” Gordon looked about him. “All of a sudden I don’t know what the hell we’re doing down here.”

“Making Brains and Stepa happy. Ours not to reason why.”

“Ours to swim about in dead water. Ugh.” It was almost visceral, his dislike for the lifelessness of the water beneath their feet. It was the exact opposite of everything he loved about the sea; that it was teeming with life in every ounce. It didn’t preclude death – the one was an existential fact of the other – but the balance was everything. He looked about at the re-opened cabinet drawers, the general sense of decay and loss. “We done here?”

‘We are,” said Virgil, decisively. “Let’s go.”

They trudged through the ankle high water and out the hatch to the ladder. Virgil carried the security box, Gordon the smaller one. It took a little accommodating to climb up to the first level, but they both managed it, their desire to be gone speeding them on. In the top chamber Stepa waited by the airlock.

“We’re going?” He already had his hand on the airlock hatch.

“We’re going,” Virgil confirmed. Stepa nodded.

“Good.” He hoisted the machine against his hip and opened the airlock. “Let us go, now.”

“You’re in a hurry,” Gordon said.

“You want to stay?”

“No.” Without seeming to hurry, Gordon made his way to the airlock in quick time. “Let’s go.”

Virgil joined them, and the airlock was first sealed and then opened, letting fresh seawater rush around them. In seconds they were immersed, and then the outer airlock was opened and they could rise up into a green sea, one brimming with life and colour and movement, the opposite of what they’d left behind. 

Gordon couldn’t help but be expansive as he swam across to Thunderbird Four. He indulged in some swoops and dives and turns just to shed the misery of the base water from his uniformed skin.

Virgil watched him with a wry expression. “You quite finished?”

“I guess.” Joining them both at the rear of Thunderbird Four, Gordon pressed the panel to allow them entry. They stepped into the airlock, Stepa cradling the machine, Virgil and Gordon with their salvage. Gordon handed his to Virgil and then left them to enter the control space. It felt infinitely good to be back in the clean and happy place that was his driver’s seat. 

“You two secured back there?”

“All good. Take us up, Gordon.”

“My pleasure.” He eased her upwards and away.

The dark blot above them that was the module grew larger in his window. He wasn’t sorry they’d come – it seemed to be important to Brains, and for that alone he would risk and do much more – but it wasn’t a mission that had brought any joy. A vision of Brains diligently working back on Tracy Island came to him, and with all his heart he wished himself back there, in the bright light and warm breeze and clear skies. Annoying their own particular genius as he worked.

Suddenly, Thunderbird Four bucked and rocked.

“What was that?” Virgil asked from Four’s hold. Gordon was busily scanning his sensors.

“I don’t know. Large water displacement – John? Seismic activity?”

“Negative, Thunderbird Four. Looks more like a localised explosion.”

“Hold on tight back there,” Gordon said crisply, and he swung Four away from the tempting surface, back towards the base. Immediately his viewing window was filled with the sight of a torrent of bubbles, cascading upwards, and his sensors began alerting him to what he already knew – these bubbles were deadly. There was one instant conclusion.  
“The base has been breached.”

“What? How?” Virgil demanded.

“I don’t know, but – “ Gordon quickly assessed what he could see as they drew closer, “Looks like there’s a huge crack right across the top of the base. We’ve got a massive contamination event.”

John’s avatar appeared, his default expression of seriousness somehow deepened.

“Gordon, you can’t use your lasers to try to melt the crack together. That water is full of volatile chemicals. You’d set off a larger explosion if you tried.”

“Yeah, figured.” Quickly he looked about on the seabed, past the stream of bubbles that were rising around them, spreading death. “There are some boulders I can use to try and slow down the leak. But we’re gonna have to use sealant. There’s the standard container in the module.”

“Make it fast,” and sometimes John was just downright redundant. Heroically, Gordon resisted a smart comeback, too busy concentrating as he manoeuvred Four into position above the reef. It hurt him, again, to tear up the little ecosystem below him, to extend the arms beneath his craft to rip the rocks apart and take them and their burden of seaweed and animals into the toxic crack on the base roof. His head told him anything living on the rocks was doomed anyway; his heart mourned.

As swiftly as he could he positioned first one, then two more rocks across the point where the bubbles were escaping so violently from the underwater base. They lessened the intensity of the leak; what had been an almost impenetrable curtain of bubbles was now a handful of much smaller tendrils, working around the bulk on top of them. It was clearly still unacceptable, but perhaps they could limit the damage to a smaller area, if they could seal it off completely, and soon.

“Alright. I’ve done what I can here. Heading back to the module and the sealant. Hold tight, you two.” This to his passengers in back.

“We’re good.”

Giving her access to all the power she had, Thunderbird Four swung around and up sharply, and Gordon’s tone matched it.

“No, you’re not. Or at least, one of you isn’t. What the hell did you do, Stepa?”

He could almost hear Virgil’s frown.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“How do you know we didn’t set off some kind of – “

“Booby trap? After a hundred years? Old explosive doesn’t stay active that long, Virgil, not in a damp atmosphere like that base. And if it was still working, why didn’t it go off when I came here the first time, or when the First Responders did? Nope, this is a whole new effort. Stepa? Care to join the discussion?”

The Russian didn’t even pause.

“Of course. I destroyed the base. I left an explosive device in the upper chamber. Very simple.”

Gordon couldn’t see his face, but he knew the expression would match the tone – completely self-assured, completely self-righteous. His hands knotted on his controls.

“Why the _hell_ would you do that?”

“So she cannot ever get hold of anything down there. This is not hard.”

“Not hard?” On the contrary, it was hard as hell not to raise his voice to a shriek. “You know what you’ve done?”

“I’ve done what needed to be done. Now, the science is safe with me. We do not need to worry that she will get it.”

“And – all those bodies down there?” Virgil’s voice dropped down to a growl, and Gordon knew that Stepa would be getting the full weight of a Virgil glower, the one known to drop adult males at twenty paces. “You didn’t think that maybe they could have been repatriated? Given a decent burial?”

“They have their tomb. I am more concerned with the living.”

“Yeah, well, thanks to you there’s gonna be nothing living in this area of the sea for a long time.” He couldn’t remember ever being so furious. Gordon was so incandescent he wouldn’t risk getting into the water in case he set all the hydrogen off. Thunderbird Four roared up to the surface, breaking it at an angle and crashing down to power towards the module. Gordon was activating the retrieval line before he’d even brought her about, sending a wave of water smashing across the loading ramp. 

“Virgil? When we’re up there, I’ll get the sealant loaded and head back down. You get him off my ‘bird.”

“FAB.”

It was going to be a very uncomfortable ride home for one Russian scientist, genius or not.


	3. What the ocean gave him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Australia retained The Ashes! A very happy Corby.
> 
> This is a sweeter, gentler chapter. Will it last? Pfft. Have you met me?

Even as she stood beside him, watching as Brains carefully lifted the first, smaller strongbox into the transparent explosion-proof container in which it would be opened, Kayo could feel Gordon’s tension. His anger. It wasn’t a look that sat naturally on him. For herself, anger was a low-simmering constant, as natural as breathing. She’d had much to be angry about in her life, and she wore it well, as armour and hunger and fuel in one. Gordon, on the other hand, was someone whose anger flared and fizzled spectacularly, a firework that settled into a damp squib given any kind of useful distraction, up to and including apology, joke, or metaphorical squirrel.

So this brooding version of Gordon, the one watching tight-lipped and stiff-shouldered at her side, was one that she didn’t recognise. 

She was aware of Virgil watching him closely. She hadn’t had much chance to debrief with either of Thunderbird Two’s crew following their return from the sea-base and the dropping off of their Russian passenger in Anchorage – his request, and by inference, one happily granted by the others. Apparently Stepa was more interested in what he could glean from the written data, and acknowledged that Brains in his extensive laboratory was far better positioned to explore the properties of the strange machine they had salvaged, and whatever was within the strongboxes Gordon had plucked from beneath the dead water of the Soviet base. He would travel on from there to the Anderson mine.

She gave Gordon a slight jostle.

“You excited?”

Gordon didn’t look at her, his eyes following Brain’s manipulation of the mechanical arms that would open the smaller strongbox.

“For what?”

“For finding out whatever is in there.” Kayo found herself in the unusual role of cheerleading the main cheerleader. “Could be treasure. Could be a KGB kit. Could be state secrets.”  
“Pretty old secrets now.” Virgil picked up the line Kayo laid down. “But definitely a chance for treasure.”

Gordon didn’t answer, only folding his arms.

Brains used the mechanical arms in the sealed chamber to apply a foam to the sealed box. A quick sizzle, and the encrusted rust and rubber seal dissolved, allowing him to lift the lid.

It was stiff, and Brains had to manipulate the mechanical hand to insert fingers under the lip and jerk it open.

Kayo couldn’t help but lean forward to see.

Photographs. Small, old, white bordering blurry black and grey. Families. Married couples. Children. As the mech-hand riffled through them, long dead faces were revealed and covered, one after the other.

Beside her, she heard Gordon make a small sound, like a groan. Abruptly he turned and left.

She sent a questioning look at Virgil, who twisted his mouth in a grimace.

“Wasn’t great,” he said in answer to the question inherent in her gaze. 

More photographs – a tractor on a vast field. A man on a horse. Sailors in striped tops, arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning for a posterity far beyond their imagination.   
And then something more substantial. Deftly, Brains turned the mech-hand around and brought the pincers together to lift a long chain out of the bottom of the lockbox, the gold still bright. At the end of it, a locket, old-looking, the Imperial eagle on the front.

“Huh. Well.” Kayo tried to find a positive. “I guess it’s good that one wasn’t lost under the water forever. It’s beautiful. Someone might want to claim that.”

“There’s n-nothing dangerous in here.” Brains checked the readings on the container’s side. “And the decontamination has done its work. This is clear to handle.”

“What about the other one?” Virgil nodded over to where the security box was encased in the decontamination container brought from Thunderbird Two. Brains shook his head.

“Max has d-detected an explosive agent inside it. P-possibly set to destroy the contents if someone attempts to force it open. We’ll have to wait for Parker, I’m afraid.”

“And Parker _would_ be at his annual weekend away. I wonder what a guy like Parker does on his weekend off?”

“Oh,” said Kayo, disingenuously, “It’s the East Islington Annual Fishing and Shooting expedition.”

“Huh.” Virgil frowned slightly. “Never picked Parker for the fishing kind.”

Kayo, who knew very well that the East Islington Annual Fishing and Shooting expedition had nothing to do with fishing and shooting and took place in the back room of the Rose and Anchor over enormous pints of bitter and a long-running game of 500, simply smiled.

She left Brains and Virgil to sort through the contents of the small box and climbed upstairs. She saw John getting his daily ten minutes of Vitamin D on the poolside deck (all his melanin deprived skin would allow before burning took place) and gave him a small wave, but didn’t change direction. Instead she continued upwards, to the first storey of the Tracy family home, where Gordon’s bedroom stood at the end of the balcony.

Counselling others was not a strength she possessed, she knew. But she also knew that Gordon and Virgil were on edge with each other, no matter how they tried to smooth their discord into something workable, so Virgil was unlikely or unable to be the one to offer solace as he would have done in the past. And something about Gordon’s demeanour felt so fundamentally wrong to her that she was compelled to seek him out and offer whatever she could.

Then again, the truth was that everything felt fundamentally wrong lately. Scott was off somewhere, checking in every day but not forthcoming about what he was doing. Ever since Hungary, Scott was her main concern, and nothing she had said or done had made the slightest difference that she could tell. Alan was worried. Far worse, so was Grandma Tracy. It was nice to have John down on the island for such a long spell, but the reason for it was damning and inescapable.

She wasn’t doing her job. 

Or, to put it more bluntly, Hamartia was so much better at disrupting them than she, Kayo, was at keeping their lives orderly.

The temptation towards self-pity was there, but she ruthlessly ignored it, along with the thought of wallowing in self-loathing. Neither would help. Focus was required, discipline, energy, craft and cunning and strategic thinking. 

And perhaps caring for the brother who looked more out of sorts than she’d ever seen him before.

She knocked on Gordon’s door.

“None today, thanks,” came from inside.

Well, that had at least a semblance of humour to it. Kayo took heart from it and pushed the door open. 

Gordon was standing by the window that offered a view over the foot of the island and out to the Pacific Ocean, an ultramarine shine in the late afternoon light. He hunched his shoulders at her intrusion.

“Hey, Kayo. I’m not really in the mood for - whatever.”

This would take finesse. She mustered her best.

“You still mad?”

“Mad?”

“At Stepa?”

“That – that _jerk_.”

She came into the room and flung herself on Gordon’s unmade bed. It smelt faintly of citrus and chlorine and male sweat.

“He speaks highly of you.”

“He just wrecked a reef – an entire reef, just contaminated the hell out of it – just so he could flip her the bird. Seriously. I don’t even think it was strategic. It was personal. It was like – like he pissed all over something so she couldn’t use it.”

The words sounded heated, but Kayo knew him well enough to know that his heart wasn’t in it.

“Yeah. Dog act alright.”

Gordon left the window and came to sit on the bed, his hands clasped between his knees.

“I should have left him in that cave.”

“Mmm. ‘Cos that would be creating such a great precedent. ‘International Rescue – we don’t like your ass, we leave it’.”

That earned a tired snort.

“Rescue subject to character test. Please answer the following – are you a jackass, yes or no?”

“You have to admit,” Kayo’s voice became sing-song, “he’s a genius. Said so himself.”

“Brains was happy to have someone who spoke Power Geek.”

“They did seem to get on.”

“Which means,” and Gordon grew sour again, “at some point we’re going to have to go and pick him up and bring him back here. I can’t promise I won’t knock his stupid genius head off.”

“Ah, you’re a lover not a fighter.”

“Yeah. I’d love to punch him.”

He sighed, and rubbed at his face in a gesture wholly unlike his usual, whole bodied actions. Kayo saw it, and the slumped shoulders, and decided tact was called for.

“So what’s really your problem?”

“My problem?”

“This.” She gestured at him. “Scott does mean and moody. John does windswept and interesting. Virgil does strong and silent. You do Labrador puppy on acid. The brooding rebel without a clue just doesn’t suit you.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected in response, but the slow shake of his head was not it. She waited, summoning patience when what she wanted was to kick him and tell him to spit it out already. 

He got up and went back to stand by the window.

“What happened in Hungary?”

She hesitated, then shook her head.

“Not my story to tell.”

“Come on, Kayo. That’s the whole problem. No one’s telling anyone anything. ‘Specially Scott.”

She bit her lip, but still shrugged.

“I hear you. And I happen to agree. But like I said. Not my story.”

Frustrated, he swung back towards her.

“Didn’t that feel like grave robbing to you?”

“Whoa. Whiplash.” She held up her hands in surrender. “What felt like where?”

“Bringing up that stuff. Looking through their photos. And now, wow, we’ve got ourselves a necklace.”

“Which we’ll do our best to return,” she said, carefully. He blew out an impatient breath.

“How? How can we do that, when we weren’t supposed to be down there? We didn’t mention anything about any loot in our initial report to the GDF. Whoops, just slipped our collective mind. I bet it’s valuable. That’s a good look, International Rescue looting rescue sites.”

“Gordon, you were the one who wanted to go back down there.”

“I know. I know, right? Just another thing I can blame myself for.”

“Oookay.” She looked at him in genuine confusion. “How is any of this your fault?”

“Well, duh. I was the moron who ignored my gut when I _knew_ something was weird about her. Then instead of following rescue protocol I went looking and found the lab. If we’d left straight away, WASP wouldn’t have trapped us there and three people would still be alive. And Virgil wouldn’t have been alone in the module. And then if I hadn’t opened my mouth after the Maly-K rescue, Stepa wouldn’t have known about the dead Russians, and figured it all out.”

“Right. Wow.” She made her voice as dry as she could – which was desert-like at the best of times. “You really have got this figured out.”

“No?” Suddenly, his voice lacked all conviction. “I dunno. I keep going over it, how we all got so – so fucked up.”

“One thing I do know,” Kayo said, leaning forward, “if you hadn’t gone to check for more survivors, right in the first instance, you’d be climbing the walls thinking about the chance you left someone behind to die alone in that place. Tell me you wouldn’t, Gordon Tracy.”

A long pause, and then at last, a rueful acknowledgement.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. No point second-guessing. And I know that, but… there’s no happy outcome here. No way the good guys win.”

“There might be. If Brains is in charge of working this through, there might be the chance that the world gets an amazing scientific breakthrough, and keeps it out of the hands of someone who would misuse the hell out of it.”

He shrugged and came to sit beside her on the bed.

“You’re right. Again. I guess – I guess it just got to me. All that death, and for what? And all their families – I remember when Virgil and I took that week-long detour to Rona, I talked to Alan afterwards and heard about how hard it was for you guys. The not knowing. And that was just a week. Imagine if we’d never turned up, if no one ever knew what happened to us.” Gordon shook his head. “If you could have seen it, Kayo…”

She nodded, but the truth was, she doubted if she would ever react in this way to that place, no matter how tragic it was. Her life and her nature sent her forward, relentlessly, regardless of the obstacles placed in her way, and she made pragmatism an art form. These people had lived and died a hundred years ago. The tragedy was no longer immediate, just echoes of forgotten sorrows, mentioned by senescent grandparents as a borrowed memory from their childhoods. She had imagination, and empathy; she lacked sentimentality.

But she knew just enough about diving in the murky water of emotion to know that a call to shake it off wouldn’t work. 

Luckily, she had something that just might.

“I know what will cheer you up.”

“Huh. I doubt it.”

“Wanna bet? Hold that thought, and be ready in 20 minutes.”

That got enough of his attention to have him turn from the view.

“Ready for what?”

“A surprise.”

“I don’t like surprises,” he said, but they both knew he was lying.

With that she left him, closing the door carefully behind her before hurrying back down towards the laboratory. She met the person she was looking for as he trudged back up from there.

“Virgil. Good. Listen, I need you to do me a favour.”

“Sure.” Virgil, amiable as ever, a reliable constant in these unreliable times.

“Get everyone together – and I mean everyone – at the entrance to the Matteo Island tunnel in 20 minutes.”

“Do I want to ask why? Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s – “ she hesitated. “Well, everything’s not fine, but I think this will help.”

He gave her a shrewd look, then nodded.

“FAB. We’ll be there.”

“Thanks. It’ll be worth it.” She gave his forearm a quick squeeze before heading for the kitchen.

No one was about, which suited her. She got out the giant picnic basket and busied herself preparing sandwiches, and if she wasn’t the greatest at the whole ‘share your feelings and kumbaya with me’ thing, she was very, very good at observing others, so she knew exactly what to make for each inhabitant of Tracy Island.

Virgil and John were easy – BLT, extra relish for Virgil. John couldn’t get enough of the crispness of the lettuce – that was just something that didn’t survive the trip up to Thunderbird Five. For Alan, peanut butter, jelly, honey and banana. She shuddered as she made it. For Gordon, peanut butter and celery. And lastly, for Grandma, Brains and herself, the leftover snapper from yesterday’s supper with lettuce and tartare sauce. She sealed two rounds of each in individual containers (well, half of them were growing boys – she could relate), added a bag of chocolate chip cookies, a bottle of orange juice, and then hesitated as she checked in the upper cupboard and found a bottle of vodka. The hesitation didn’t last long.

“Why the hell not?” This family could do with some loosening up. She opened it and the juice, poured out a quarter of the latter, and topped the bottle up with the vodka.  
By the time she was finished she saw Virgil herding Grandma and Gordon down the stairs. He gave her a wave.

“The others are already waiting,” he called over.

“Thanks, Virgil. Right. Matteo Island, here we come.”

“Not that I mind,” said Gordon, looking as if he minded very much indeed, “but why the hell are we going to Matteo Island?”

“Gordon?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and walk.”

They met up with Alan, Brains and John down in the tunnels below, and then together they made the short trip beneath the channel that separated Tracy Island from its little brother, until reaching the access tunnel that led to the surface.

“We need to be on the eastern side,” Kayo said. With various levels of tolerance, from easy-going acquiescence to perplexed grumbling, her family did as instructed, opening up the eastern access point and climbing out onto the rocks there.

The sun had set a few minutes before, and the sky was brilliant with colour; from duck egg blue to apricot and mauve and gold, and beyond the show was the darkness of space, to which John sent a wistful look.

“It’s very nice, dear.” Grandma settled herself equably on a rocky point. “I’m sure that’s not why you brought us here.”

“No, it’s not. Here, everyone – sandwiches and screwdrivers. Let’s get this picnic started.”

Virgil, looking amused, accepted a cup and his container. John did the same, with an awful attempt at an English accented “Cheers”. Alan looked like he couldn’t believe his luck as he took a cup.

Everyone got themselves suitably supplied, even Gordon, although she was disappointed to see that he chose a seat away from where the rest of the family had unconsciously gathered together in a semicircle, facing the sunset. With an inward sigh, and the fifteenth prayer to the marine gods to supply the surprise she had seen yesterday as she flew in and was now counting on to cheer up the people she loved, she climbed up to sit beside him.

The rock he had chosen was narrow, so she wriggled against him.

“Shift.”

He gave her a look that no one would categorise as friendly, but did so, letting her get a more comfortable position.

“So are you gonna tell us why we’re out here?”

“I know, you were brewing a perfectly good sulk in your room and I’ve interrupted it.”

“I wasn’t sulking.”

“Brooding then.”

He hunched forward, rejecting her. She would have rolled her eyes if she didn’t know him so well. This wasn’t petulance, or irritation. Gordon the game player wasn’t playing any kind of game at all. This was damage, and if her people skills were honed enough to tell the difference, they didn’t include much in the way of knowing how to go about healing it.  
Awkwardly, she reached over and patted his shoulder. 

“Uh - there, there?”

He swung around, incredulous.

“There, there? What the hell is – god, Kayo, you suck at this.” But as he finished he was almost laughing. “There, there. That’s hilarious.”

Pleased to see some liveliness, she allowed him the moment. Then she gave a good impression of a pout.

“Well, excuse me for caring. I just wanted to cheer you up.”

“Yeah.” He gave a noisy sigh. “Yeah, I know. I appreciate it.”

They sat in silence then for several minutes, listening to the good-natured chatter from where the rest of the family sat, Kayo eating her sandwich, Gordon nursing his. She nudged him.

“May as well eat. And drink. I make a mean screwdriver.”

A brief, wry smile.

“I remember. You made them that Christmas Eve. Virgil was hungover for a week.”

“Was not,” came from the rocks below. 

“Stop eavesdropping,” Gordon called back down.

“Ears like a bat,” Kayo said.

“Brain like one, too.”

“Hmm. That seems a bit harsh. What’s Virgil done to get in your bad books?”

A moment, when she thought he wouldn’t answer, then those tight shoulders dropped a little. 

“Nothing. I mean, nothing he shouldn’t do. We’re all suspects now, right? That’s what Scott thinks. So it’s only – well, not fair, but Penelope’s a suspect same as everyone else. Only she’s not here to defend herself, and I _know_ she’s not the leak.”

Kayo gave that a moment to sit out there, as the last streaks of colour disappeared from the sky and the stars began to appear, brilliant with the lack of artificial light to compete with. It was perfectly warm, of course, and a light breeze kept it delightful. If it wasn’t for the conversation, and the fact that she was beginning to doubt if what she had seen was going to happen again, Kayo could really enjoy this beautiful evening.

But she had a self-appointed task to do, and so she did it. With one word.

“How?”

“How do I know Penelope isn’t the traitor?” She expected irritation, or outright anger, but this Gordon was too heartsick for either. “Same way I know no one else is. Virgil’s wrong. Scott’s wrong, and he’s messing with everyone’s head because of it.”

“Is that why you’ve been such a gloomy-guts lately?”

“Gloomy-guts? Huh. You know, you should really do this full time, you’re a natural.”

She dismissed that.

“I know, I’m crap at this, but I’m here. And you know what I’m talking about. So spill.”

He made a little helpless gesture.

“I don’t know? I mean, yeah, sure, I hate that Virgil and I aren’t – aren’t right, and that I think Scott sucks, the way he let us down on mission and now he’s disappeared right when we need him to be Scott Scott, not lunatic paranoid Scott. I hate what it’s doing to us, Kay. And…”

“And?”

He shook his head, drawing his feet up under him so that he could rest his chin on his folded arms, a move so transparently defensive that it hurt her to see it.

“And ever since going down in the spooky Russian death sub, I feel like I – like I’ve brought them out with me. Like they’re hanging around me. I can’t get rid of them, and I feel bad for even wanting to.”

“Do you mean ghosts?”

This time it was John’s voice floating up from the family circle.

“No, I don’t mean ghosts. Jeez, Johnny.”

“Sounds like ghosts.”

“Can – Virgil, kick him.”

“There’ll be no kicking,” Grandma said, firmly. 

“Is there any chance Kayo and I can have a private conversation without everybody goddamn listening in?”

A pause, then a concerted murmur of “No,” “Not really”, “Don’t think so” came up. Gordon threw his arms out in exasperation.

“Fine. Okay. Loud frequency time. No, it’s not ghosts, but yes, it feels like it, and it sucks, and I don’t know what to do about it. And I know I’m being a downer, but I keep seeing them and thinking about them. Okay?”

No smart responses to that, and Gordon harrumphed back to his protective position, knees tucked against chin.

Kayo stirred.

“You said ‘sub’.”

“What?”

“Before. You said zombie Russian sub.”

“Didn’t say zombie.”

“Alright, whatever. You called it a sub. It wasn’t, it was a base. And the people that died in it – they weren’t your friends from WASP.”

“I know that.”

“Really? Because the way you’ve been reacting about it makes me think part of you’s not so sure.”

Gordon, frowning, said nothing to that, but she could tell he was thinking about it. They sat together in a silence that, if not comfortable, was at least non-combative. The chatter below picked up again, softly, as the sky and sea grew darker. She began to admit that her surprise was not going to happen, but it felt as though perhaps something had been achieved anyway. The healing power of nature, sandwiches, and a good slurp of vodka.

“I wish…” 

“What?” She tried the patting thing again. This time he allowed it.

“I wish Penny was here.”

“Maybe you should go visit her? While Scott’s away.”

That sparked something in him, the barest hint of his usual spirit.

“Yeah? You think. God, that would be – yeah.”

“I think we’ve got a spare plane or two lying around here,” she said, smiling.

“Hey, Kayo?” This from John. “This is nice and all but – “

“Holy shit!”

“Alan! Watch your language, young – goodness gracious!”

Kayo gave a little gasp of relief and delight.

At the base of the eastern side of Matteo Island a rock shelf extended some 400 feet out under the water, creating a shallow reef before the rock dropped away precipitously into the depths. In daylight the water often appeared turquoise against the darker blue around it. Now, under a sliver of moon, it should appear black – but instead an edge of luminous blue was lighting up the sea, glowing fantastically in each ripple.

“Wow.” Gordon sat forward, pure delight on his face. “Look at that! Bioluminescence dinoflagellates.”

Kayo grinned.

“Like my surprise?” she called out.

Whoops and claps answered her.

Gordon jumped up, extending her a hand. “Let’s go look.”

“Sure.” Ordinarily she would spurn any such help (and the unwary soul who offered it) but tonight, in an act of generosity and solidarity, she took his hand, and they made their way down to where the rest of the family had crowded to the edge of the rocks.

“What is it again?” John asked, poking a toe at it and watching as the glow intensified as a result.

“Dinoflagellates.”

Alan laughed. “Dino flagellates who now?”

Virgil said nothing, drinking in the beauty as the true artist he was.

The blue was mesmerising in its brilliance. Kayo left Gordon to kneel down and run her fingers through it.

Behind her she saw Grandma come to stand beside Gordon and slip her am through his.

“Whaddya say, kiddo?” She bumped him with her hp. “Care for a swim?”

“Can we? Is it safe?” Alan asked, hopeful.

“We didn’t bring any swimwear…” Virgil began.

“Pfft. Who cares? No one to see.” Grandma began unzipping her jumpsuit, revealing a bright purple bra. “You better believe I’m going in. How often do you get the chance to swim in blue water?”

“Unless your tighty-whiteys are too compromised, Virge?” Gordon pulled his shirt off and dropped it carelessly behind him.

“My – underwear is just fine, thanks.”

“That’s a sentence I could have happily gone my whole life not hearing,” John murmured. Alan was already stripped down to his underwear and sliding into the blue waves.  
Any agitation of the water meant the blue flared brighter, so the bow wave created by Alan’s entry brought brilliance spreading around them all. Brains took off his socks and shoes and paddled by the edge; Grandma put her boots carefully on a rock and then dived straight in, sending glowing droplets high into the night sky.

Kayo turned to Gordon. “So? Coming in?”

“How did you know this was here?”

“Saw it when I flew in last night. Haven’t really had a chance to talk to you about it, what with all the – Russian treasure stuff.”

“Russian treasure. Yeah.” He looked away, but then he turned and grinned at her. “You know, I think you should wear that locket. An eagle would suit you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Without warning or even seeming effort, he pushed her backwards straight towards the water, fully dressed. She grabbed wildly for him at the last second but he stepped away, anticipating the move. Despairingly she let gravity, and Gordon, win.

When she came back up she was just in time to see him give a yell and leap high into the sea, splashing luminous blue light everywhere.

Well, it wasn’t a cure, and it wasn’t anything like what she’d planned, but seeing his face as he surfaced was just about reward enough for Kayo Kyrano, counsellor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay safe in the bushfire regions, people.


	4. Running blind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott has a plan to trap their enemy, but it's one that is taking a terrible toll. Alan is the first to be recruited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the frabjous Soleil-Lumiere for the beta!

It always began the same way.

He knew what it was, knew he wanted to escape it, but the unnatural, metallic laughter would ring out and some part of his mind would acknowledge that it was happening, it was real, it was inevitable, and it would be horrible.

A bright, focused light would snap on. The laughter would stop, which was a relief, but he knew it was temporary. He would look down at his feet – sometimes in flying boots, sometimes in his International Rescue uniform, sometimes bare – as they slowly began to sink into the island. Tracy Island. Home, but so tiny, so shrunken. The monolith that gave him such strength of soul was in reality no more than ten feet high and wide, and even as his gaze left the downward track and went desperately outwards, he would see that the ground was shrinking, torn away in chunks by hands emerging from the sea all around him. Sometimes the sea was an ominous red, or black. Sometimes, worst of all, it was clear, but the transparency that should have revealed his tormentors did no such thing. Instead he realised that the hands pulling away the island were appearing from nowhere.

Impossible to trap. Impossible to stop.

He could not run. The island swallowed his feet, then his calves, his knees. He never disappeared completely into the gluey ground. There was time to hear voices – language he couldn’t understand, questions he couldn’t answer – and then he would wake, rigid, his fingers digging into the mattress, his heart and head pounding and always, an awful moment when what was real and what was imagined blurred so that the bed was an island and the voices were here, right here, in his room.

The response – not the solution, never the solution – was to get out of bed, whatever the time, and run.

Scott ran around the base track that lead to the far side of the island. He ran through the tunnels that took him to Matteo Island and back. In the bright darkness of a Pacific night he would be alone, avoiding the light in Brain’s laboratory, the faint thud of music from Gordon’s room, the glow that told him Grandma was awake and reading. He craved each of them and more, but he avoided them with an instinctive survival sense.

No one could see him like this.

There would be a taste in his mouth, something acrid. His hands would clench. He knew his neck was taut, his eyes… he could only guess what his eyes revealed.  
Today he’d dozed off upright in the chair in his bedroom, coffee long congealed in front of him, a map before him, one more to consider in his ugly, futile, desperate planning. 

The awakening was brutal, head snapped upright, the harsh light still somehow in his eyes. Laughter still echoing in his head.

“Report,” he gasped.

No answer; he wasn’t in One, he wasn’t wearing the comms gear built into their uniforms.

Blindly, he looked about him. A comm unit sat nearby. He grabbed it.

“Report. Status report. What’s going on?”

There was a pause, and then John’s cool, sane voice: “Scott? Everything’s fine. All on stand down, remember?” Another pause, and then his brother’s unwavering calmness; “You doing alright?”

“Fine.” A cleared throat, the hidden scramble for authority. “Yeah. Fine. Thought I heard something.”

“Nope. Nothing happening here. I think Alan’s down with Brains. Virgil and Gordon are en route to England. Grandma’s reading. Kayo checked in two hours ago.”

John knew that he needed to know where his family was. It was Scott’s way of grounding himself (but the ground was disappearing, and he was trapped in it…)

“Thanks, John. I’m going for a run.”

“Sure.” He heard the question – _ what are you telling me for?_ – that John was too disciplined to ask. He could be grateful it was John and not Gordon hanging around the control desk.

Abruptly he pushed away from his desk and grabbed his runners. 

Scott ran all over the island.

Most often, as today, he would set himself to run to the top of it.

In going there, past the round house through which Alan’s bird so spectacularly flew, Scott was following a long-established escape plan they all shared.

He knew others used it, at times. Somehow, they managed to work an unspoken system that meant if one of their family sought refuge up top, the others would leave them alone. At least, for as long as their lives that were beholden to the whims of fate and unwary adventurers would allow.

Today he attacked it ferociously, counting off every yard gained, proving to himself that Tracy Island was solid, and large, and if it didn’t actively have his back, at least it was something hard and strong behind it.

He paused, breathing only slightly heavier than usual, right at the point of the peak where the overflow outlet from the water spray cleaning system that cleaned their craft trickled out onto the rocks. He liked this spot. He liked the fact that ferns grew there – tucked away in crevices of the rocks, nurtured by excess water no one else wanted but that gave them life. There was something about the sheer persistence of them as they curled and spread their fronds high above the Pacific Ocean that Scott kind of admired. He could use a little of their survivalist pragmatism right about now.

From where he stood, the island expanded out beneath his feet. His gaze took him to the far horizon, distant and clear enough that he could detect the curvature of the Earth on the horizon’s endpoint. He could see, literally, for miles.

He could see nothing.

(Run.)

If anyone had ever suggested that he would be plotting against his own family in the way he had been in this last few weeks… well, he would have called them a liar. Probably broken a few of their teeth for the privilege of doing so.

Scott was not a contemplative person. Not like John, or Virgil or even Gordon, who could each spend time letting the universe settle within their own souls, watching space or the sky or the sea. He had more in common with Alan; planning was their meditation, action was their prayer. But in this late afternoon light, clear and golden, as he pivoted slowly on his heel so that the vastness of their surrounds became utterly open to him, Scott found himself trying to grasp the shadows and barbs that were wounding his mind.  
He was about to deceive the people he loved more than any others on the planet. It burned him to do it, but he withstood the flame because he knew he must.

Never before, though, had he prayed so hard for one of his plans to fail.

** ***** **  
“I think it’s working!”

“H-h-hold it there, Alan! This is the c-critical point.”

Alan unconsciously bit his lip and focused, keeping the two sparking wires as steady as he could while Brains manoeuvred the tiny terellium chips into their complex pattern within the arc created by Alan’s efforts. The last chip slid into place and immediately the pattern glowed with energy.

“Stand back now!”

Alan knew and obeyed that directive. He jumped clear, watching fascinated as each of the chips began to oscillate within their individual cradles as the energy flow tapped into their subatomic register.

“Wow. That’s kinda cool.”

“Y-yes it is, Alan. Very cool.”

Brains beamed at him in such a contented way that Alan felt a little bad about his next question.

“Uh – so what does it do?”

He should have known better. There was nothing most scientists liked more than expounding on their own work, especially when that incorporated a discussion of their own brilliance. Brains was that purest of breeds; he did it without ego, solely excited for the discovery, but the question was like the final blow to a piñata full of techno-babble. 

“These discs are generating exponentially more energy than they would previously have stored. The vibrations at a subatomic level are generating massive energy amounts. It’s all from Stepa’s data – that is, from Irina Rostova’s. For her it was theoretical, because she lacked terellium. The fact she c-could envisage this… extraordinary. If I can just stabilise the process, we c-can use these as portable power packs.”

“Just those little things? I mean, how much power are we really talking about?”

“Enough to power Thunderbird Two for five hours,” and if there was a trace of tartness in Brains’ tone, well, he probably deserved it.

“Wow.” He didn’t have to feign his approval. “Is this oscillating tension energy creation?”

“Exactly!” Brains beamed at him. “Where did you hear that?”

“Read it in physics last year. Sounded neat.”

“You never cease to surprise me,” Brains said, which Alan could take as a compliment or not.

He reached one finger towards the nearest disk. “That’s amazing. Hey, you know, people could take these when they were camping, be like taking a generator along only in their pocket.”

“I know, Alan.”

“And people could use them to power emergency accommodation at disaster sites – they could power hospital tents and heating and all kinds of things.”

“I kn-know, Alan.”

“And! They could use them in space, wow, like, imagine the weight difference if these were your power source on an extra-terrestrial mission. It would be massive! People could go so much further exploring if they didn’t have to take a fuelled generator.”

“I _know_, Alan.”

“So. Pretty cool, huh?”

“P-pretty cool.” Brains re-focused on the matrix of little capsules in front of him. “Thank you for your help.”

Alan waved that away, magnanimous.

“Ah, it was nothing.”

“Not quite.”

It occurred to Alan, dimly, that Brains might well be shading him, but he dismissed that possibility on the grounds that he _had_ held the wires.

“Okay. So anything else I can help with?”

“No, thank you.”

“I can just hang about for a while, watch what you’re doing?”

Brains bit back something he was about to say, and instead said, “Why would you want to? Isn’t there anyone else you could anno – b-be with?”

“Nah.” Alan sighed, shoulders slumping. “Virgil’s taking Gordon to England. I don’t get why he gets to have a holiday. I mean, I know we’re offline, but why don’t I get to go to England, too? Scott – I don’t know where he is anymore these days. He’s _never_ here. Kayo’s gone half the time, too. And Grandma’s doing yoga. She likes to be one with the universe when she does that, or something.”

“So I’m your last resort?”

“Yeah,” said Alan, unselfconsciously.

That made Brains smile, for some reason, which Alan counted as a win.

“Alright. You can stay.”

“Thanks. So. How come you’re working on this and not the – you know – transporter beam stuff?”

“Ah. Well, Stepa is still decoding all the data he brought back from the b-base. It’s a slow process. Once he has extracted everything from it that he c-can, we’ll begin working on it together.”

Alan hoisted himself up on the workbench.

“How come Max couldn’t decode it? Or EOS?”

“B-because the coding is both mathematical and using particular historical word play. Arkady’s father was a p-professor of sociological history, and he is helping Stepa – he is vital to making meaning of it all. There are still some things that the human mind can do better than the mechanical, and making ironic or c-cultural connections where none are obvious is one of them.”

“Huh.” Alan curled his lip. “I didn’t like having him here. Not after what he did.”

“It was a ruthless decision, I admit. Not one you or I would have taken.”

“How can you stand him?”

“S-sometimes, it is important to think about things from another person’s point of view.”

“What point of view is that?” Alan’s voice was dangerously close to a whine, and he heard it, but couldn’t help it. Stepa _sucked_.

“I agree that what he did was dangerous.”

“And selfish.”

“Yes. B-but think, Alan. He has held such a - a monumental secret. He has risked his life, and the lives of everyone he knows and cares about, to p-protect that secret, and he was right to do it. It would have b-been m-much easier for him to work with his government. If he had handed over what he knew, he would be a hero, rewarded, p-praised, but the world would be a much more dangerous place. Instead, he t-took exile under a volcano.”

“Doesn’t make it right.”

“Not to us, no. But a man who has d-done that much will not hesitate to take every s-step he can to ensure that all his sacrifices are not in vain.”

Alan’s sneakered heel hit moodily at the workbench.

“Maybe. But I don’t think Gordon will see it that way. When Stepa comes back from Canada with all the data, you better keep him and Stepa in separate rooms.”

“P-probably a good idea.”

A thought struck Alan, with a sudden tingle of alarm.

“Hey – how do we know it’s safe for him to be in Canada? In the Anderson Mine? How do we know Hamartia isn’t going to grab him and the new stuff?”

“If she knew where he was, surely she would have gotten to him earlier than this? That’s what Stepa thinks, anyway, and I am inclined to b-believe him.”

”Well, how come she doesn’t know? She’s known _everything_.”

Brains straightened up from his work. “Now that you mention it, that’s a very good question,” he said, thoughtful.

Footsteps sounded outside the laboratory, and then Scott was at the door.

“Hey,” he said, “private party?”

“N-not at all.”

“You should see what we made!” Alan excitedly dropped down from the bench and tugged at Scott. “Tell him, Brains!”

“Why don’t you?” said Brains, and there was something nice about his expression that reminded Alan again how cool Brains was. For a genius.

Five minutes and much feverish holding of wires and sparking of energy later, Scott gave Brains and Alan each a pat on a shoulder.

“Well done, guys. This could really be something. This alone is worth the meeting with Stepa. Now, if you don’t mind, Brains, can I steal your lab assistant for a bit?”

The question was for Brains, but Alan answered.

“Sure. Cool. What are we doing?”

It occurred to him that there might be something a little too eager in his response, but Scott had been so distant for so long – so distracted, and hurt somehow – that just seeing him here, seeming okay and relaxed and apparently wanting his company, had Alan feeling like wagging his tail in pleasure.

“Oh, just for a walk. Want to come?”

“Sure,” Alan said again. “You be okay now, Brains?”

“I’ll manage.”

Scott winked at Brains – Alan wasn’t sure why, but it was good to see it – and then he and the brother he adored headed up and out, into sunshine and a cooler breeze than the morning’s lush warmth had offered.

Alan took a deep breath.

“This is nice,” he said. “Hey, do you know why Gordon’s going to England?”

“Last I heard, that’s where Penelope is.” Scott moved purposefully upwards, and Alan followed.

“Yeah, I mean, I _know_ about the girlfriend angle, I meant, how come he gets a holiday?”

Scott stopped, and looked back at him. His expression was somehow far more serious than it had been in the laboratory.

“Why? You want a holiday, too?”

“Well, not a _holiday_ holiday. Not really. But – I’m just over being stuck on here, you know? I haven’t even gotten off the island to go for supplies.”

Scott turned back and kept climbing.

“I mean, I’m not complaining,” Alan complained.

Something non-committal from Scott, so Alan wisely shut up and climbed behind him. He realised they were heading for the roundhouse gym.

“We gonna workout?”

Scott didn’t answer.

In his own opinion, Alan was regularly dismissed, ignored and overlooked. He got it. He was the youngest. Worse than that, he _looked_ it; his was a baby face, one that would have people underestimating him until he was into his forties (as impossible as that enormous age seemed to him now). It was undeniably frustrating almost all the time, but it did bring its advantages. Quietly, as their family’s adventure as International Rescue unfolded, Alan had begun to realise that he saw things others didn’t, by virtue of the very unregard that irked him. People talked around him; people let down their guard, forgetting he was reading in the corner, allowing their faces to reveal more than they had moments before as another family member left the room. In his own way, he was as observant as Virgil. That he didn’t always draw the correct conclusions was down to experience and a little less proclivity for strategic thinking. But he was learning to put things together, to pick up a glance here, an irregularity there, and create something that would most likely have astonished his brothers had they known.

So he had, in his dismissed, ignored and overlooked way, pieced together a great deal about what was going on with Scott to make him feel so fundamentally off.

He knew it happened in Hungary. He knew there was a doctor in Melbourne who Scott was seeing, in between his undiscussed, clandestine trips. He knew that Scott was triple checking the island security – compulsively, late at night, in the middle of the day – and that while doing so, his face had the same look it had when Dad disappeared. And with these scraps, he knew that Scott was, to use Gordon’s term, out of whack.

It bothered him, horribly.

Scott was their leader. Not perhaps officially. And everyone had their roles to play to bring everyone home safely. Grandma was the heart of IR, Virgil their steady spine, and John the calm brain at the centre of every storm. But Scott was the one that ultimately each of them turned to for the final decisions, and not only because he was the eldest brother. There was something so inherently heroic about him. If Alan ever defined it to himself, he would use a word he’d never say aloud; Scott was noble. 

Well, that was, when Scott was operating at his usual level. But it wasn’t a word that he would use for Scott lately. In these last few weeks, Scott was acting more and more –

No denying it. The word floated into Alan’s mind with a persistence born of a sense that it was right.

Sneaky.

Scott was planning something, and that was normal, he was always looking to bring IR an advantage. But this Scott was also furtive about it, and that was so new, and so wrong, that it had everybody on the island sending little worried looks to each other. Which, yeah, great, but why wasn’t anyone _saying_ something?

But he knew that, too. It was because everyone was hoping that they were wrong. That if they didn’t address it, Scott would gradually get back to being the kind of clear-eyed, square-jawed hero that belonged on recruitment posters, and this would all be a bad time thankfully put away in those mental lockers that kept all the other bad times contained and out of sight.

Now, as he scrambled the last few feet to the level platform on which the roundhouse stood, Alan was seeing something new – or rather, something old – in Scott. A sense of purpose. And if he wanted his youngest brother at his side as he worked the treadmill or lifted weights, hell, Alan would gladly spend the afternoon being cheerleader in chief.

He’d already helped Brains.

Scott stopped at the door. For a moment, so quick another would have missed it, his shoulders rounded slightly, that rare but significant tell Alan had been seeing too often lately. Then the slump was gone; shoulders back, head up, Scott turned to face him, and something thrilled in Alan’s soul because this Scott? This one with the flame in his bright blue eyes, the determined set of mouth, the air of certainty? This Scott he followed into hell and back, every mission, and he found himself grinning.

The sight obviously confused Scott, halting whatever it was he was about to say. 

“What are you so happy about?”

Alan shook his head. “Nothing.” He gestured. “You were gonna say..?”

“I was going to say – yes. I was going to say, Alan, I need you to promise me something.”

“Sure. Anything.”

“No.” Scott took a step closer, put his hand on Alan’s shoulder. “No, I need you to really think about this. I need your clearest thinking. I need you to understand what’s at stake, and I need to know I can trust you.”

Unconsciously, Alan straightened his own shoulders.

“You can,” he said, firmly and directly as he knew how. Scott nodded, slowly.

“Yes. I think I can. It’s why I chose you. But I need you to promise me that what I’m about to say to you goes nowhere else. Not to Grandma, not to Gordon, not to Kayo. No one.”

That he meant this was so obvious to Alan that he didn’t stop to think about why Scott would be demanding it. What he did feel, overwhelmingly, was Scott’s need for this to be secure. And, simultaneously, a thrill that he was hearing these words from the brother whose approval he craved more than any other.

He nodded, once, and tried to somehow convey just how faithful and trustworthy he was as he said, “I promise. Not a word.”

“Swear it to me.”

He groped for something, and it didn’t take long to find.

“I swear on Mom and Dad.”

Scott looked hard at him, and then something relaxed. He squeezed Alan’s shoulder, then dropped his hand and turned back to open the roundhouse.

“Alright. Let’s do this.”

Wondering, half fearful, half excited, Alan followed him into the gym.

Transparent terellium walls surrounded the central tunnel from where his Thunderbird flew. In the room surrounding it was all their gym and their all too often used rehabilitation equipment. The view was as beautiful as anywhere on the island, but still, it seemed an odd place for a meeting so suddenly imbued with grave intent.

On the bench sat a portable information pad (a PIP). Scott entered his code and then a second one and slowly a three dimensional image appeared. It was a device of some kind. Alan could see at once that it had tracking capabilities – those satellite relay nodes were unmistakable – and he looked quizzically at Scott.

“Is this Brains’ stuff?”

“No.” Scott hit another button and the image rotated. Now Alan could see its energy source tucked beneath an all-weather carapace. It was similar to tracking devices he’d seen elsewhere, with only minor modifications. There was nothing special about this little unit that he could divine by looking at it. “No, this is my design. Made at Tracy Industries. It’s set to respond to that identifying heat signature that John captured on the Nazca Plain, the one from Hamartia’s aircraft. I’ve analysed all her known attacks, and cross-referenced to the global satellite system. Here,” and he hit another button, and a map of the south Pacific appeared, “just off Kiribati is a position that she is most likely to pass on a regular basis. This scanner is capable of capturing that heat signature as she does so, and locking on in a tracking mode. With this scanner, we can follow and trap her.”

“Wow. That’s so cool. But – why don’t we tell the others?”

“Because it needs to stay our secret for now. I’m trusting you, Alan; I would keep it to myself, but it’s important to have redundancy planning in place.”

Alan nodded. Of all of them, he was perhaps most acutely aware of that need, working as he most often did in the unforgiving realms of space.

“So when we get a hit, we tell the GDF?”

“That’s the plan. Now. I need to tell you these exact co-ordinates.”

“Sure. If the unit stops working, gotta have someone know where to go with the screwdriver and boot.”

Scott smiled at that. 

“Boot or a fist. Either one. But I need you to memorise this – not write it down, anywhere. Security has to be absolute.”

Mesmerised by Scott’s insistence, Alan just nodded.

“The coordinates are 3.3703 south, 168.7340 west. It’s on a tiny atoll. No one would come across it by accident. There’s no way she could know about it.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing? Getting this built and – and dropping it off in the middle of nowhere?” 

“Yeah. I had to do some pretty fancy footwork. Not sure what was trickiest – hanging out of One while I was setting it up near Kiribati, or getting the guys at Tracy industries to put this together without letting them know what they were working on.”

Alan felt a flood of warmth and relief flooding his body.

Scott had been sneaky. He had been keeping secrets. But they were secrets designed to save them all. As usual, his big brother was bearing the people he loved upon his own shoulders, thinking only of them, taking the weight of important decisions and doing what needed to be done.

Impulsively, he hugged him. Scott gave a small chuckle, his arms stiff by his sides.

“It’s a great plan, Scotty. It’s gonna work. Those bad guys are not gonna know what hit them. And I promise, I won’t say a word to anyone. I know how to keep secrets. Ha! Wait till Gordon finds out, when GDF have got ‘em!”

“Yes.” Scott did not seem anywhere near as excited as Alan, but that made sense. He’d been working on this for a while, after all. “This could be the end of it all.”

The end of it all. That would be nice, wouldn’t it. But the thought came sharp yet fleeting into Alan’s mind, even as the words hit home.

Funny, how sometimes EOS’s voice sounded less robotic than Scott’s did.


	5. How Far to Find a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil needs to clarify some things. Scott's plan doesn't help him at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Sol, who really liked this one!

He watched as Gordon jumped down to the tarmac and waved him goodbye, a jauntiness in the way he jogged over to the taxi stands that had been missing from his little brother for a while now. Well, heading off to see your lady-love would do that, he supposed. It left Virgil sitting in the cockpit of Tracy 1 and feeling somewhat… deflated.

The thought of firing up the plane and heading home was not one that gave him the usual kind of pleasure. Despite Kayo’s best efforts – and frankly, the bioluminescence display had been amazing – there was just too much tension and frustrating inactivity at home. He’d painted. He’d played. He’d cleaned, and performed maintenance, and tested new systems. He’d run up the mountain and back again enough times that he knew there was no revelation to be found at the top.

He wasn’t haunted, as Gordon had been and perhaps still was. He wasn’t hag-ridden by doubt and suspicion, like Scott. He couldn’t find the calm that Grandma and John displayed, or shrug off the ill-feeling as Alan did, or seemed to.

No. He was out of sync with himself and his surroundings, and at a loss to know what to do about it. One thing he definitely didn’t want to do was head meekly home to cool his heels while Scott plotted whatever the hell he was plotting, or listen to Brains extol the mental workings of a man whom Virgil had very real reason to thoroughly distrust and dislike.

He had friends, didn’t he? Why the hell shouldn’t he have a visit of his own?

With sudden enthusiasm, Virgil began a mental scrutiny of those few people he could genuinely call friends. 

Karolina in Poland. Met her on a rescue in Bialystok, trapped in a collapsed mine-shaft. She was fun. But then, last time they’d caught up she kept talking about the way he’d rescued her and, as flattering as she probably meant it, it made him feel uncomfortable.

Tomás, in Guatemala. Hayden in Brisbane. Wayan in Bali. Coco in Marseilles.

He liked them all, enjoyed their company, but it occurred to him that they all knew him as Virgil from International Rescue. For some reason, today he wanted to leave International Rescue behind him. Just for a few hours; just to relax and talk about non-rescue based stuff, particularly with someone who didn’t owe him anything, who didn’t picture him in uniform and as part of some larger identity belonging to others.

Nancy in New Orleans came to mind at twice – they’d bonded over music one night in the French Quarter, her on trumpet, him playing piano in a sleazy little bar off Toulouse Street. But then he remembered that Nancy was heavily pregnant with her second child. A drop in from Virgil was probably not on her wish-list.

And with that, he thought of the perfect person.

Berhanu.

God, he hadn’t seen Berhanu since graduating from Colorado U. He’d kept in touch, now that Berhanu was back in Harar, in Ethiopia.

Berhanu was a man that Virgil had instinctively liked. Kind, calm, clever, with a dry sense of humour and a quirky way of looking at the world. They’d studied together at Colorado U, working alongside each other on their final Honors projects, and Virgil could honestly say that without Ber’s advice at particular junctures, he may not have achieved the marks he did. He liked to think that his interventions did the same for Berhanu.

And best of all through all that time, Berhanu had no idea who he was.

Well, that wasn’t really accurate. Maybe it would be closer to say, Berhanu knew who Virgil was; he just didn’t know who Virgil Tracy was, with all that implied and imposed.

When Scott went to the air-force there was no chance of disguising his background. Scott was Jeff Tracy’s son, he was the one chosen, even destined according to some, to uphold his father’s legacy.

Gordon, too, had no chance of escaping the Tracy snare. Once chosen for college level swimming, he appeared on the national media radar; picked for the Olympics, and there was no way of fudging his pedigree. Gordon Tracy represented the US at the Jakarta Olympics, and that was that. Virgil doubted that Gordon ever worried about it, either way; he wore their legacy lightly.

But he and John – well, they found a way to create their own space. At least, in John’s case, for a little while, as an undergraduate.

Both enrolled at their respective universities under their mother’s maiden name, as both had first and middle names just a little too identifiable to be useful (Gordon, as Gordon Cooper, had a brief period of anonymity in WASP before happily outing himself as _that_ Gordon). John Glenn and Virgil Grissom were undeniably names demanding interrogation; neither would have relished investigation for long).

But as Virgil Grant and John Grant, both had achieved the anonymity they craved. Virgil Grant studied mechanical engineering at Colorado University alongside a selection of students who had no idea their colleague had, if called upon, billions at his disposal. Instead, he lived on his allowance, took his share of ramen weeks, worked part-time jobs and generally just fitted in.

It was one of the happiest periods of his life.

And Berhanu was there through all of it.

His story captivated Virgil; a young man subsidised by his family and, what was more impressive, his community, to come and study in the USA. Berhanu repaid their faith and funding by working harder than anyone else in their cohort. He was undeniably bright, frequently challenging and often surpassing Virgil in results; but more than that, he had a singularity of purpose that left Virgil open-mouthed in admiration, as others succumbed to party and weekend invitations and Berhanu studied on, alone.

Best of all, his wicked sense of humour that complemented his own dry take on university life meant that setbacks were greeted with something like perspective.

It would be beyond good to catch up with Berhanu face to face.

Trouble was, Harar in Ethiopia didn’t have an airport. The nearest one was Dira Dawa, an hour or more away by car. And okay, Tracy One could drop wherever it wanted – but Virgil shied away from that.

He’d been Virgil Grant, student. Someone who had refused the parachute his father offered him and instead struggled along in time-hallowed student style.

His father never questioned his choice. But he never offered him an easy out, either; once Virgil had rejected the money available to him, the withdrawal of immediate options had been substantial. It wasn’t punitive, Virgil knew that; but it _was_ instructive. Well and good, said Jeff Tracy; you’re taking a stance. Good for you. Here, take all the consequences, with lashings of deprivation and can I just add a touch of ‘told you so’? Why, yes I can.

Virgil had copped all of it, willingly, but ultimately, dishonestly. If not exactly a game, it was a feint without real penalties. Had Virgil flamed out, he knew his father was there to pick him up – and not just in a make-do way, but with a job in a huge international company, and if it was initially entry level, he knew his rise would be expected and expedited.  
When he compared his experience to Berhanu’s, he felt ashamed.

As he sat in the elegant luxury of Tracy One’s pilot’s seat, he began to consider his choice.

In all their subsequent correspondence his actual financial status had never arisen. Arriving in Tracy One at Harar might just suggest the need for reappraisal.

That it was long past due was suddenly very clear to him. 

Maybe that’s why Berhanu’s name had come to him so insistently. Maybe his unhappiness at the swirling uncertainties now muddying his family’s relationships brought this one into sharp focus. Maybe this was one translucent relationship that could become fully transparent. Perhaps that would ease the ache that had taken up so much of his heart.

But if he was to come clean, he wanted to do it face to face with his friend. Arriving in Tracy One would mean that he was flaunting his wealth before confessing it. Far better to take the slow route and find a way to bring it up carefully, in his own time and at his own choosing.

Decision made, he began making some calls.

*** *** ****

He landed in Dire Dawa, and the booked hangar was available as promised. Also as promised, a rickety looking car, and a smiling driver holding the door open.

“Harar, sir. Welcome.”

There was something very soothing to Virgil’s frayed nerves to allow someone else to take the wheel for an hour or so. He sat back gratefully and let Ejigu, the driver, take them down the long, winding road, through scrubby land that rose even higher towards distant peaks here in the highlands of eastern Ethiopia. Recent rain meant the dust was gone from the vegetation, and a brilliant green softened the dark soil.

They spoke, occasionally; about the villages they passed, about the children tending goats who laughed and waved as they drove by, or watched in large-eyed suspicion.

“Harar is a beautiful city. A famous city. Why are you staying only two hours?”

“I’m visiting a friend.”

“Ah. A good friend, to travel so long for such a short visit.”

“Yes, he is. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

“Does he know you are coming to see him?”

Virgil knew that part of the wages Ejigu was getting for the drive, the wait, and the return trip was gossip, so he supplied it good-naturedly.

“No, I’m surprising him. I’m going to look pretty silly if he isn’t home. But then, I’ve always wanted to see Harar, so it won’t be a waste.”

“If this comes to pass I will be happy to be your guide.”

“Ejigu, I might take you up on that.”

The trip passed quickly; in a little over an hour the road brought them southeast through two country towns in the highlands until finally the first houses and streets of the outskirts of the city itself.

“What is the address you need, sir?”

“Well, he lives in the walled city part, I know that.”

“Your friend lives in Harar Jugol?”

“If that’s the walled city, then yes.”

“This is very fortunate. He is a lucky man. He is from Harar, then.”

“No, not originally. From a small village. I forget the name. But he married a girl who lives in Harar.”

Obviously intrigued, Ejigu asked for names, of the village, the girl’s family, but Virgil had to admit he’d forgotten those details.

“She’s Makeda. I don’t remember her other name. It’s been a long time,” he said, half-ashamed. It occurred to him that Berhanu might think he was a complete idiot for dropping in like this. Who drops in on someone who lives ten thousand kilometres from your home?

_A ridiculously rich someone, that’s who_.

His belly tightened. Well, it was long past time that he told Berhanu the truth. And doing it face to face at least held the smallest prospect of retaining some self-respect.

But it might mean a very chastened hour-long drive back to the airport.

It took several turns and another few minutes on a long, straight boulevard before the famous wall became visible.

“The address is Mekina Gir-Gir Street. You know it?”

“Of course! I will take you to the statue – you can walk from there.”

Ejigu waited his turn to drive through one of the gates, an ornately decorated entrance that led to another long, straight road lined with trees. Roundabouts occurred every hundred metres or so, always with a statue of some kind in the centre. At last they came to a particularly wide one that Ejigu parked before entering.

“Across there is Mekina Gir-Gir. Would you like me to come with you?”

“No, that’s fine. Thanks, Ejigu. Two hours?”

“I’ll be here, sir.”

He got out of the car and into a busy world of colour and scents so unlike his island home. Rich blues and reds of the women’s clothes delighted his eyes, dust and spice and something sweet and musky enticed his nostrils. For several minutes he just stood there, aware of Ejigu’s curious looks but indulging his senses in the brilliant light.

At last he began walking over to a street that was a little wider than the cramped alleyways he saw all around him, coming off from the circle.

There were few street numbers visible, and of those that were, most were unintelligible to him. The notion of knocking on doors was a time-consuming and crazy one. At last he admitted to himself that the surprise would not be a ‘knock on the door’ one, but something that would still, he hoped, be fun.

He took out his phone and hit Berhanu’s number.

Several rings went unanswered, and he was beginning to think he’d really miscalculated, when the light on his phone went from blue to gold as a voice said, “Selami?”

“Berhanu?”

“What - is that you, Virgil? Hey, it’s good to hear from you. Sorry, just in the middle of a very important project.”

“Oh?” He felt his stomach drop. Stupid, to pull a stunt like this without checking beforehand. What was he thinking? “Uh, sorry. Sorry. I was just – “

Berhanu chuckled. “No, it’s fine. Building an underwater cave for my girl. The 3D printer has decided it doesn’t want to work, so Abba is trying to fix it before he’s asked to make the thing with clay or something. We can chat. How are you?”

“Uh – it’s more a matter of where am I.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m on Mekina Gir-Gir Street.”

“Shh, Lielit, I can’t hear my friend. Yes, sorry, Virgil, I think I misheard you.”

He laughed. “Nope. You didn’t. I’m on Mekina Gir-Gir street, but I haven’t got a clue which house is yours.”

There was silence.

“Ber? You there?”

“Yes, I’m here. You’re – you’re here? In Harar?”

“On your street, yes.”

What was immediately recognisable as a swearword, despite Virgil’s complete ignorance of Amharic, and then he heard Berhanu yell for Makeda.

“Hey, look, if it’s a bad time…” But Virgil was grinning, because he could hear the pure excitement in Berhanu’s voice.

“Alright, where exactly are you? What can you see?”

“Uh – a kind of factory, I think, and a blue house…”

“Right, right, I know where you are. We’re about thirty metres down from there – the pink house with a dark blue door. Facing south, it’s on the left.”

“I see it.” Virgil allowed his own excitement to grow. “Be there in about thirty seconds.”

A whoop and the line closed.

The house in question had an exquisitely shaped door, with a high step to its entrance. It was impossible to tell where it ended and its neighbours began; the only indication that they were separate dwellings were the doors, and the occasional demarcation of different coloured walls.

As Virgil reached it, the door operand wide and there was Berhanu his arms stretched wide.

“Virgil! Come in, come in! Inikwani dehina met’ah!”

“Ber! Hey, long time!” A quick hug, and then the kind of arm’s length appraisal common to old friends the world over.

“You look like being a dad suits you,” said Virgil, grinning.

“And you look like you’ve grown several inches. In all directions. My god, are you a gym junkie now? Say it isn’t so!”

Virgil laughed. “Nope. Work. Uh, speaking of being a dad…”

“Ah, yes.” Berhanu looked down at the little girl who was staring wide eyed at the big tall white man suddenly in her house. “Lielit, say hello to Uncle Virgil. He is the man who sent you Karama the Kangaroo.”

This brought an immediate, dazzling smile to the little girl’s face.

“Karama Koo-goo-roo!”

If Virgil hadn’t already been rendered to a pile of melted goo by the big dark eyes, the delight on her face would have done it. She reached for his hand, obviously wanting to take him with her.

“Wait, wait, sēti liji. Let our guest settle. Makeda – “

But his wife was already there, letting out a stifled shriek at the sight of Virgil and running to give him a hug.

“Virgil! It is so good to see you! About time you came to see us.”

“I know. I said I’d come visit after the wedding…”

“At least you’ve made it. It’s - honestly, it’s kind of bizarre seeing you here. I mean, tremendous, but I’m looking at Virgil Grant, in my home. Crazy times.” Berhanu shook his head, grinning widely. Makeda hip-checked him.

“Are you going to offer him something to eat? He’s travelled from Kansas, doesn’t he deserve some food? You’re a terrible friend.”

“And a shit husband,” Berhanu offered.

“Cela va sans dire.” Makeda had studied in Paris. “I could tell you so many things, Virgil…”

It was said with such affection that Virgil’s heart warmed anew.

“I’d love a coffee,” he said.

“There. See? The poor sod needs a coffee.” She’d also worked in London. Berhanu just beamed at them both.

“Coffee. Yes. I’ll get it. I can’t believe it. How are you here? _Why_ are you here?”

“_I’ll_ get it. You,” and Makeda shoved Berhanu playfully into a chair, ”will sit and talk.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry to just drop in on you like this. Well, no, not sorry. I just had the opportunity, thought I had to take it.”

“Well, dropping in doesn’t happen.” Berhanu spoke as his daughter climbed onto his lap. “Not without some serious planning. Not to say money. I take it your dad’s company is doing well? You’re doing well?”

Ah.

He hadn’t expected to come to the crucial point quite so soon. And he realised, in a way that he had never consciously done before, just how much he had kept from his friend, for the sake of his guise as just another student. Jeff Tracy’s loss was world-wide knowledge. He hadn’t been able to discuss it with Berhanu at any time. Gordon’s efforts in the pool, Scott’s in the Bereznik War, John’s in space – none of it was mentioned. His family was kept deliberately vague, backgrounded until emergency demanded a brief explanation. He told them of Gordon’s accident because he cancelled plans with them to go and be by his bedside.

He hesitated; and Berhanu unwittingly added salt to a long-festering wound.

“Sorry. None of my business. Just pleased to see you. Amazed to see you! I never dreamt any of my Colorado U friends would ever make it out here. I mean, I get it. This is the far side of nowhere, right? For Americans? So what made you decide to come? How long are you staying? You’re very welcome to stay here with us, of course, we have a spare room, we can put you up, no problem. Was there something you needed to do here?”

A whim. He’d come on a whim. The kind only obscenely wealthy people could indulge.

And maybe for something else. Something there was every chance he didn’t deserve.

“No. I mean, I just – I guess I figured it was a long time since we’d seen each other, your wedding was the last, and now you’ve got a daughter I’d never seen, little Lielit here… I thought I’d come by.”

Ber was frowning. And why wouldn’t he be? You didn’t drop by Harar, unless…

“Are you in some kind of trouble, Virgil? Is something wrong?”

Oh, lord, yes, there were all kinds of things wrong in Virgil’s world. And trouble, sure, but not of his making, and not anything that could be fixed with the use of a well-meaning hideout.

“I – “ Virgil spread his hands. “Honestly? I really had some time and chance to come by so I took it.”

Berhanu’s frown deepened.

“But where did you come from? DD? So, what – you drove from there?”

“I got a driver. He’s waiting for me. I have to go back in a couple of hours.” It came out defensively, and even Vigil could hear the evasiveness. He couldn’t help it. He’d always been an awful liar, a woeful conman, and the fact that of all the Tracy boys he alone had maintained a kind of cover for so many years was truly a remarkable cosmic joke.

He’d done it because it was, in fact, easy at the start. No one ever questioned him, so no direct falsehoods beyond the name were required. Everyone accepted Virgil Grant, whose dad had a small hardware store in Kansas. Everyone invited him in to share their struggles. Virgil remembered Gordon talking of the hangers-on and gold-diggers he’d experienced following the Olympics, and he knew that was exactly what he’d sought to avoid by his (at the time, it seemed to him) small act of _suppresio veri_.

Now there was a wealth of measurement in his friend’s eyes, a parade of speculation and emotions, and Virgil was reminded just how smart Berhanu was.

“What’s going on, V? What aren’t you telling me? This doesn’t make sense.”

Makeda came back into the room, carrying a beautifully lacquered tray bearing three small, aromatic coffees and one milky drink in a glass.

“Here you are. Virgil, you will want sugar and cream?”

“Just as it comes, please.”

“Ha.” Makeda, pleased, offered him a cup. “Most Americans swamp the coffee. Cream, sugar, it’s not at all right. Here, beloved, yours.”

“Thank you.” Berhanu took his cup, but he kept watching Virgil, gravely.

Virgil caught the look, and nodded.

“Yeah. Fair enough. Time I came clean, I guess.”

“About what?” Makeda took her own coffee and settled on a divan on a level below that of her husband. “What’s going on?”

“Virgil is going to explain how he decided to just pop by for a couple of hours.”

“Ooh. This should be interesting. Do you think he’s an international criminal?” Makeda sipped her coffee, engaged.

“I don’t know what he is,” said Berhanu, evenly.

Virgil’s stomach slowly twisted.

“Not who I presented myself as at Colorado U. But I hope you’ll hear me out about that.”

Berhanu looked down at his coffee, before lifting his eyes to meet Virgil’s.

“I don’t know what you’re going to say, but I think I know you. It’s clear you left out some of the details somewhere along the line, but I’d be – surprised if anything you had to say changed that.”

The more decent his friend was about this, the more shitty Virgil felt.

“Well, I hope not. But I really want you both to know that this was never about fooling people for the sake of it. That was never anything I wanted. I just wanted to have the kind of university experience that most people have. I didn’t want to be set apart. I misrepresented myself, no doubt, but only in terms of… well, it was the name, but it was my family and everything that came with that.”

“Okay.” Berhanu’s gaze was steady. “So who are you?”

“Not Virgil Grant, obviously,” said Makeda, thoughtfully.

Virgil shook his head. “That was my mother’s name. No, my actual name is Virgil Tracy.”

Berhanu and Makeda both nodded, considering.

“And what does that mean? Why would you hide that?”

“Uh – Tracy? Tracy Industries?”

“Tracy Industries Tracy?” Berhanu blinked. “Are you related to _the_ Tracy family?”

“Yeah. I’m – I’m one of Jeff Tracy’s sons.”

Makeda’s cup clattered back onto the tray. Berhanu’s mouth had unconsciously opened. Lielit twisted in his arms, obviously wondering what the adults in the room were getting so worked up about.

“Abba?” she said.

“It’s alright, Lielie. Nothing to worry about,” Berhanu said. Makeda frowned.

“But – no. I call bullshit. Those people are millionaires.”

“Billionaires,” Virgil said, almost apologetically.

“But – I saw you struggle with me. We had those two weeks on noodles and ketchup.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Something in Berhanu’s face had begun to harden.

“So, that was an experiment?”

“No, not- not really.”

“Slumming it. Finding out how the poor people lived just for the fun of it.”

“For three years?” Virgil felt the conversation slide away from him into an irrevocable and terrible misunderstanding. The look on Berhanu’s face was exactly what he’d feared, what he’d weakly hoped to avoid. “No, that wasn’t why. I enrolled as a Grant. It’s just so different when you’re rich. People have such different expectations.”

“What’s that line about the world’s smallest violin?” There was genuine anger in Berhanu’s voice now. “I wasn’t pretending my poverty. It may have felt cute to you, but every cent I had was precious and came from people who were sacrificing everything to keep me there. I spend every day paying that back with the work I do. I’m developing power packs for remote villages, souped up solar batteries so we can bring electricity to every home, no matter where they are. I could be working in Addis getting six times what I make working here with the non-profit, but I do it because I owe my education to people who really couldn’t afford it, and it’s the right thing to do. What was it all to you? A fun way to pass the time before slotting into Daddy’s corporation? Pretending to be poor so that it all felt so much sweeter when you could go home and dial up whatever you wanted? Is that how it was?”

It was feeling more and more like this had been a mistake, but Virgil was a fighter. He hadn’t given up on them yet.

“I hear you. I know how it looks. But – think about Cameron. Remember him? And Randolph. And Phoebe, right? Owned half of Aspen between them. Remember how they went out of their way to ignore us? And how happy we were that they did? What do you think would have happened if I’d been there as Virgil Tracy? They would have been all over me, and you probably wouldn’t have trusted me as far as you could throw me.”

“With good reason, it seems!”

“Berhanu, enough,” Makeda said. She got up to reach for Lielit, whose eyes had grown even larger at the heated voices and who buried her head in her mother’s neck when picked up. “Just stop and listen.”

“I am listening.”

“No, you’re grandstanding.”

And then, at the worst possible time, the comm in Virgil’s thigh pocket began vibrating – three short bursts. That meant it was International Rescue business, impossible to ignore. Instantly, his adrenaline began to rise.

“I’m sorry, Ber. I have to take this. Is there anywhere..?”

“Of course. I’m sure it’s _important_.” Berhanu gestured wearily to the door behind him, and Virgil nodded his thanks.

He opened it to find a room obviously given over to Lielit The walls were a faded oxblood red, there were bright hangings on them, and alongside and between them were 3D posters of famous children’s characters – Moxy Foxy, Adora, Karama the Kangaroo. The furniture was child-sized, and the thought of sitting on one of the little chairs brought an immediate mental image of splintered wood under his large frame. He leant against the wall instead, right next to Karama’s furry grin.

He wasn’t surprised to hear Scott on the comm.

“Switch to secure mode,” was the first thing Scott said.

“Is everyone okay?”

“Yes. Fine. But I need to talk to you.”

Virgil suppressed a sigh as his fight or flight response began to fall again.

“Scott, this is a really bad time,” he began.

“Where are you? You should have been home an hour ago. And switch to secure mode before answering.”

Virgil ground his teeth to stop himself from saying what he wanted to. Instead, he entered the series of numbers that was peculiar to his phone. Brains had devised the new system, a series of scramblers in place and an ever-changing idiosyncratic code pattern that each member of Intentional Rescue had to memorise. After each call, the number had to be adjusted by another factor; in Virgil’s case, after using this series, he would add two to each number in the string the next time he used it. Brains was positive the system was secure, and Virgil believed him. Hamartia did not have superpowers, however much her efforts had been daunting. The only thing that would breach these communications – was the thing that Scott believed was happening.

Treachery. Betrayal.

Seemed like the theme du jour.

There was a series of clicks and buzzes as the scramblers took the call and hid it in a stream of data bounced from a dozen satellites.

“What is it, Scott? You sure everything’s okay?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m taking some personal time. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Dammit, Virgil, you can’t just do that right now. I’ve been worried.”

“I let Grandma know.”

“That you were visiting a friend, yes. But what if you’d been …”

“What, kidnapped? Come on, Scott. I was always contactable, as you just proved.”

A weighty silence from the other end, as Virgil pictured Scott reeling in his temper.

“Okay. What’s done is done. You’re safe?”

“Yes. What is so urgent that you need to talk to me right now? I’m in the middle of something.”

“Something _personal_.” Scott made it sound like a triviality. Virgil bit down on his own temper.

“Something I have been needing to do for a while. So. Make it fast, Scott.”

“If you can spare the time,” and that was Scott at his most heavily sarcastic, a tone that always made Virgil uncomfortable, “I’ve been working on our problem. I’ve come up with a solution, I think, but I need to tell someone about it.”

“Some ‘one’? Just tell all of us. I’ll be home in a bit, we’ll call a meeting, get Gordon on the comm – “

“No, you don’t understand. I’m not telling anyone except you.”

Virgil let that sit there for a moment as he tried to process it, follow where Scott was so determinedly leading. It didn’t make any kind of sense to him though, so illumination was not coming.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because we’re compromised. The only one I trust is you. I need someone else to know what I’ve done, but I can’t let everyone know in case it gets back to Her.”

This was a new dimension of Scott’s fear that Virgil had not yet seen. One hand crept up to cross his belly, a feeble gesture towards comfort in an increasingly distressing call.

“Scott. This is – Scott, talk to Grandma. Talk to Brains. You know you can trust them. I’ll be home soon, too.”

“I’m not telling anyone but you. Virgil, listen.”

“Scott – “

“No, Virgil, _listen_! I have put a scanner on the Nazca Plain. It’s the most powerful one in existence. I built it through Tracy Industries – don’t worry, none of them knew exactly what each component was for, so no one can betray us to Her – and it’s now set up, scanning the entire southern hemisphere for that particular heat signature her aircraft gave off. If she comes anywhere into its zone, we’ll have her. Given it’s where she brought Thunderbird Two, I think it’s highly likely she’s got some kind of base down there. Once we can identify that, the GDF can get her.”

“Okay.” Virgil said it slowly, thinking it through. “Sounds good. But this is something everyone should know, Scott. Everyone’s been through a lot with Hamartia. This would be – “

“No! Virgil, you know we have a leak. Someone is feeding her intel.”

“If we do, it’s not anyone in the family.” Virgil said it as firmly as he knew how. This was a matter of fundamental faith to him, and it was clear that Scott had temporarily (_lost his freaking mind_) overlooked that.

There was a long silence on the comm.

“Scott?”

“We don’t know that.”

“Oh, come on. No. Scott, this is crazy. What, Alan’s a mole? Gordon? Are you hearing yourself?”

“Alright. It’s crazy. I’m crazy. And Hamartia didn’t know the details of our rock pool picnic. She didn’t know the details of our secret rescue mission. Virgil, I hope to god I am crazy, I honestly do. Paranoid. Over the top. But I need to do this. I need to keep this between the two of us, this plan, because I need us to be free of her and this is the only way I can see of doing it.”

The fear that had begun to curdle through his veins at the beginning of the conversation was now in full flood. He knew he had to get home. Scott – this wasn’t the man he knew and trusted. He’d known the toll it was all taking on him, but this was truly alarming.

He spoke slowly, soothingly. “Okay. I won’t tell anyone. I suppose I should be grateful that you trust me.”

“I do. And I needed one other person to know about it in case anything happened to me.”

“Scott, we’re offline. What could possibly - ?”

“You know very well that if the GDF called with a situation, I’d be there. And we wouldn’t know what the hell I was flying into, not if She can get intel on our operations so easily. So you’re my backup.”

There was a truth to what he was saying, and Virgil had an insight into just what kind of burden his brother had been carrying. This plan of his didn’t make sense in some ways, but as a strategy to bring Hamartia down it held promise. If Virgil could look past the tortured thinking that had produced it, perhaps this was the way to go after all.

“I’ll need the coordinates.”

“14 43’34’S, 75 8’ 54’ W.”

“Right. So how’s it monitored?”

“I have that covered. If anything happens to me, the details of that will pass on to you.”

“God, Scott – “

“Just promise me, Virgil. On Grandma’s life. Promise me you won’t tell anyone else about this.”

Virgil closed his eyes, breathing in the sweet smell of spice and crayons and children. From somewhere deep within him rose a brief surge of hatred so violent it almost made him nauseous, centred entirely upon the woman who had so cruelly used him and now so callously toyed with his entire family. The evil of her, the wrongness, was now affecting a man of honour and courage, a brother he loved and respected and admired. The hatred flared and then subsided, swallowed down bitterly, leaving him wretched.

“I promise, Scott. You can trust me.”

“I know I can. Scott out.”

The hand holding the comm dropped to his side and he simply stood there, watching the dust motes slowly shift and fall in the light at the edges of the shuttered window.

He felt sick and sad.

In the other room waited two people he had called friends who now probably despised him. 

If the universe allowed it, he would weep.

But it didn’t. He’d disrupted and upset his friends, so he needed to go out and make such amends as he could. And then he needed to get home as fast as possible, to see if he could have some part in healing the damage being done to his big brother.

Cautiously, he opened the door.

To see Makeda standing with crossed arms, and Berhanu looking – sheepish?

“There you are,” she said. “Is everything alright?”

“No,” said Virgil, too sick at heart to find the polite lie. “I need to get back.”

“Back? To your home?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, before you go, Berhanu has something he’d like to say.”

That some strong discussions had taken place while Virgil was out of the room was clearly apparent in the way Berhanu’s mouth twisted into a rueful grin.

“I have been instructed by my wife to – how did you put it, beloved?”

“Get your head out of your damn posterior,” she said, sweetly.

“She reminded me, because she is the smarter of us, that you are still Virgil. Who your family is doesn’t matter. We know your heart. I was – it made me feel that our shared past was not true, that everything we had done together was a lie. But Makeda made me see that you were not a lie, and that our friendship was not a lie. Just a detail was changed. She asked me to consider if it would make a difference had I thought you rich and found you were poor.”

Berhanu stood, with his hand outstretched.

“Āzinalehu. Please forgive my poor behaviour.”

“And dreadful hospitality,” added Makeda, coming to give Virgil a hug as he took Berhanu’s hand, bewildered.

“No, no, it’s me who’s in the wrong. I’m sorry, really I am.”

“You shouldn’t be sorry for being who you are. The Tracy family does a great deal of good in the world,” Makeda said. “The Tracy Foundation has done much to help others.”

“Do you have to go back now because of it?” Berhanu finished shaking Virgil’s hand and gestured to the food now set out on the table. “Can you eat first?”

It was tempting. Virgil knew, instinctively, that to share food at their family table would be the most simple and profound way to show that there was no breach in their friendship after all. And ten minutes wouldn’t make a difference to what he had waiting on the island.

With immense gratitude, he sat down.

“I’d love to.”

Makeda beamed at him, and he knew he’d made the right choice.

“So is there a problem with your family?” Berhanu continued.

“Yeah. In a way. I thought the call was for International Rescue, but it’s my brother, really.”

“Wait. What?” Berhanu frowned. “What do you have to do with them? Are you working for International Rescue?”

Oh.

Well, he’d shared the one secret with his friends, and it wasn’t as if they tried to keep the other hidden; they just didn’t go out of their way to publicise it. Plenty knew, of course, not least thanks to Todd’s efforts, but it didn’t form part of any formal Tracy Industry announcements or public policy. People knew, or they didn’t; there was no attempt to dissemble, but neither did any member of International Rescue trade on it. So Berhanu’s lack of awareness was not uncommon.

It was just – unfortunate that Virgil was revealing something else he hadn’t been forthcoming about.

“Er – yes?”

“What do you do?”

Virgil shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, I fly Thunderbird Two. The big green one? If you’ve seen any footage or anything. Er, yeah. And, you know, do rescue stuff?”

Berhanu and Makeda stared at him.

Until Ber put back his head and roared with laughter.

Makeda began giggling, helplessly, even as her husband collapsed, shoulders heaving.

Virgil watched them both, uncertain, until finally Berhanu wiped his eyes and said, “Duuuude.”

Makeda, still giggling, whacked Virgil on the arm.

“Where is your brains?” she managed to say.

“My brains?”

Berhanu shook his head, chuckling. “Virgil, you – you idiot. Alright, alright, let me tell you. This is what you do. You come in here, you say, old friends, I have something to tell you. I am a hero. I risk my life for people all the time. I have saved thousands. Oh, and by the way, I am also quite rich and I use this money to fund my work saving others.”

Virgil sighed.

“And that would have worked?”

“That would have worked. Idiot.” 

“Eat.” Makeda handed him a plate of injera wat. “Oh my goodness, you really buried the lead, didn’t you? International Rescue. Tell us all about it.”

So he did.

He told them about each of his extraordinary brothers. About his grandmother, the toughest of them all. About his adopted sister, and the genius that kept the whole thing going. Before he could second guess himself, he told them about Hamartia, too, and the poison that her enmity had brought into their lives.

When he finished, the ten extra minutes had become forty, and his friends were looking at him soberly.

“That’s awful,” said Berhanu, finally. Virgil nodded.

“We’ve been offline for several weeks because of it. It’s driving us all a little crazy, I think. This woman – she scares me, and she infuriates me, and I hate – hating her. We have to stop her, and I have had so much faith in us, in our combined abilities, but I’m beginning to think that she’s just – better.”

“Well, she’s unscrupulous,” said Makeda. Matter of factly. “That’s always a tactical advantage, until it isn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “That is always their downfall. Their defeat is part of who they are. She will make a decision based on this lack of scruples and it will turn back upon her.”

Her assuredness was unexpectedly comforting.

“You think so?”

She nodded. “Every time. Every time in history, such people win for a while but are then brought down. It will happen with her, you can count on it.”

“And in the meantime,” said Berhanu, “you need to go home and keep your family together. You never talked about them in specifics, but I remember how you used to spend hours on the phone talking to them all. Seemed like they all called you when they needed you. I remember when you went to Florida when your brother was in trouble.”

“Well, I remember you telling me how Virgil was the one who would always get you and your lot out of trouble,” Makeda said. “Seems like it’s your superhero power. Saving people from themselves. So you need to go home and do that."

Some of the turmoil in Virgil’s chest seemed to settle at their words. This was what he had hoped for from them, he realised; clarity.

Lielit was now sitting on his lap, Karama the Kangaroo firmly clutched in her hands after being duly inspected by him at several points of the conversation. Regretfully he handed her back to Ber, her ābati. 

“I better go. Thanks, Mak, Ber. Hey, Ber, you know that thing you were mentioning – working with low cost portable solar batteries. You know, if you wanted some funding, I could really help.”

“You going to pull a White Saviour on me?”

“No. Just thought I could put some of that money to good use.”

“I don’t know,” said Berhanu, slowly. “I mean, sure, we could use the funds, but I’ve always thought that you bring up money between friends and it changes thi – “ He stopped. 

Virgil quirked an eyebrow. 

“Yeah,” he said, evenly.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Virgil grinned. “It wouldn’t be me. I could put in a word with the Tracy Foundation."

“That would be – very helpful,” and Berhanu was grinning back at him. “So you really are ridiculously rich and fly in a ridiculous plane and do ridiculous things. But you’ll always be the dork who dis-assembled Dean Callaghan’s car and re-assembled a fridge inside it.”

“I’m glad my legacy is intact,” said Virgil, and found himself in a one-handed hug from Ber and Lielit, combined, and then a full embrace from Makeda, who was a little teary.

“Now we know you’re filthy rich, you can come and visit us all the time,” she said, and Virgil laughed.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And bring champagne. And caviar. I’ve never had caviar.”

“And Koogoororoo,” sang Lielit, waving her toy at him.

He left them, waving, and stepped out into the street, their cries of farewell and teasing demands following him.

Heading back towards where he’d left the car and Ejigu, he let the warmth of the visit flow through him, giving him a strength he hadn’t had when he arrived.

He’d faced a lingering dark place in his soul and brought light to it. He’d renewed ties to friends who loved him for who he was, not where he came from or what his family owned.

And he brought with him now the wisdom of Makeda’s words, too. 

Hamartia would go down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Gordon's roped in.


	6. English Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon, Scott's plan, and the unlovely Parker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the lovely Bow Echo, who wanted pen and ink. Feeble as it is, it's yours.

He was learning her.

At moments like this – pre-dawn, the softest of lemon light filtering through a curtain gap, the bed a warm nest, hungers of every kind beginning to make themselves known – she curled towards him, head tucked into his shoulder, her hair a mess of gold on the pink pillowcase. Her mouth was open, only slightly, just the tip of her teeth visible. One arm was above her head, crooked like a flamenco dancer’s caught in mid-swirl. The abandon of that limb was contrasted by the other, the arm across his chest, the hand upwards, a supplicant’s pose, fingers loose and curled, rising and falling with every one of his breaths.

He was learning her.

This was his lady, Penelope, without armour, all guards down. That he got to see this still took his breath away, still sent little shivers of delight down his spine.

He had to work for that intimate knowledge. She fought against it, even as she wrapped her legs around his hips, even as she urged him on with little thrusts and sighs. She held back, her secrets and her trust organically entwined within her, as tightly knotted as tendons. He could feel it and see it, the way her eyes were huge but watchful, the way her hands gripped him as if, even here, even now, he might lose her. He might disappoint.

But he was a pupil in love with his subject. He paid attention, did his homework. He asked questions – with his hands, his tongue, his eyes – and he learned where and when to touch her, how soft and then how firm, how steady, how perfectly controlled in order to strip every one of those guards away from her.

He’d learned, now, what sound she made when she lost herself to him, and he’d learned it was the best sound in the world.

Their passion was astounding, but these quiet, unheralded moments were so precious that he breathed them in, slowly, watching his chest rise with her hand on it, so caught in the closeness that he could think of nothing but existence in his body next to hers. He understood then how people could talk about the world dropping away. Nothing outside this bed mattered. Nothing outside this bed existed.

He knew it was a beautiful fantasy. He knew there were prices to be paid for these moments. But for a time suspended somewhere in the dust motes gradually brightening with day he was able to exorcise all demands but that of the woman here beside him.

Unconsciously she tilted her head towards the advancing light, a sunflower searching for the source. She licked her lips and closed her mouth, swallowing the morning air.  
Slowly, fascinatingly, a small pearl of drool escaped her perfect lips and dropped to the pillow.

It was the imperfections that caught his heart, every time. 

The ice queen belonged to the public. The head girl, poised and precise and restrained, was the one the media and the populace got, and it was a pretty package, no doubt. That Penelope quietly terrified him, for a couple of years.

But now - gloriously, now, he got the one who drooled on the pillow, who dropped spaghetti onto her white Balenciaga ball-gown, who – scandalously – farted so badly after the garlic prawns in Salisbury that he fled to the hotel bathroom, locking himself in, while she cried with laughter on the sheets, begging him to come back and face it like a man.

That was his Penelope.

He wanted to touch her face, trace its lines, lift that stray hair back from her forehead and kiss where it once lay. But it had been a late night – a late and strenuous and exhausting, wonderful night – so he ignored the hunger and feasted another way. Watching her. Breathing her in.

Ignoring the scratching of Sherbert at the bedroom door.

Sherbert was a cute dog. No question. And the truth was, Gordon loved just about any animal that walked, flew, swam or burrowed (scuttled – lizard scuttling – did not make the cut). Given the head start he had, Sherbert was a shoo-in as someone he was going to have a warm and accepting relationship with.

Except for first thing in the morning following a night of genuinely fantastic sex.

Penny needed sleep.

Sherbert needed shushing.

This much, he could do for her.

Sliding out from under her hand took a lot of ninja stealth and several frozen moments as she seemed to stir, then lapsed again into sleep. An advantage of being able to hold your breath for seven minutes was his ability to hold it again to steady the boat, so to speak, before lifting her hand, wriggling out from under the sheets, then gently lowering it to the warm space he’d left. Carefully he pulled the eiderdown – “Never call it a quilt, Gordon, really,” – over her exposed shoulder and arm to keep her snug, then tiptoed over to the door. At the last moment he remembered staff, and Parker, and the trauma of seeing an admittedly handsome and buff but undeniably naked male parading around Creighton-Ward Manor before anyone had time to fortify themselves with a stiff whisky. He grabbed his dressing gown from the pouf where he’d flung it very early on last night.

“Not that the staff wouldn’t appreciate a little eyeful of this,” he murmured, waggling is butt to a non-existent audience. Penelope would have laughed. Well, scoffed, then laughed. She might well then grab, but that was for later.

He opened the door a slit, putting his leg through it immediately.

“No, I’m not letting you – no!” This as Sherbert tried to scramble up his knee. Gordon hastily slid the rest of himself through and closed the door firmly behind him. “She’s sleeping. She’s tired. You and me, we have to look after her. Hey – how about some breakfast? Num nums. I dunno, what does Penelope say to you about food? _Does_ Penelope talk to you about food? Of course she does, what am I saying? Okay, Sherbert, so – croissants or muffins? Or is cereal more your deal?”

He must have used some recognisable word in there because Sherbert immediately stopped trying to climb his leg (not humping, Sherbert was most definitely not trying to hump his leg, that thought was one with which he could not deal at 0700 hours) and turned to trot downstairs.

“Lead on, McDonalds. Or is it ’lay on, McDonalds’? Or is it not even McDonalds? Mac Something? Lead on Bic Mac?”

Ruminating, relaxed, if not erudite, Gordon followed his girl’s dog down to the kitchen.

He found Parker ensconced in one of the 17th century rush covered kitchen chairs. Parker sent him an unlovely look over his newspaper, England being one of the very last to insist upon paper news, to the point that old-fashioned newspapers were now considered as quaintly British as high tea, double-decker buses, and parliamentary sex scandals.  
Gordon could appreciate the strategic value of a cleverly wielded paper, given the effect of a baleful eye or two glaring over the top of one.

“’Ad a nice evening, did we, Gordon?”

“Very nice. Very, very nice.” Gordon had always found cheerful incomprehension to be a particularly useful redoubt against Parker’s not infrequent attacks. “You?”

“Oh. I kept myself busy.”

“Sure you did. Security to secure… staffroom to staff… muffins to muff.” Speaking of, Gordon spied a basket of them, fresh-baked, on the dresser. “Ooh. They look exactly what I need.”

“And what would you be needing them for?” If glaciers could speak they would weep with envy in the knowledge they would never achieve that level of pure chilliness.

“For the purpose of feeding one thoroughly – “ he searched for a suitable word, found several decidedly unsuitable ones and briefly considered the use of them for the sheer fun of it – “weary Lady Penelope.”

“Hmmph.” There was more than a world of contempt in that hmmph. More like a solar system of it. Parker was nothing if not generous with his disapproval. “And would you be making ‘er a cup of tea, if h’I might be so bold to ask?”

“Tea? When you’re on the job? No, wouldn’t dream of it.” Gordon plunked the teapot down in front of Parker. “I mean, if you can spare the time?”

Glowering, Parker lowered his paper to a halfway point that suggested he was quite ready to wield the newspaper if required.

It was the act of folding it that caught Gordon’s attention. The image of a woman and her accomplice. 

Hamartia. Their own personal demon. There, on the front page, the composite picture cobbled together through tortured memories supplied by him, Virgil, Kayo, and mediated through the mechanical artistry of Max before being sent to the world’s media.

To see it, so bold and naked. Their enemy, their nemesis, revealed in a medium so banal and everyday as a tabloid. A necessary strategy, Colonel Casey said, the brutal stripping of her anonymity, the raising of awareness in the general public. And yes, of course, said IR, and those in its ranks who bore her scars bowed to the inevitable and the urgent need while folding their shoulders to protect themselves from the injury, the assault, of seeing her folded on a kitchen table.

Gordon felt the bareness of his shoulders, even in his robe.

Parker eyeballed him, daring weakness, and Gordon pulled his robe a little tighter.

“H’of course, I can spare the time. All the time in the world for m’lady.”

The ‘You, on the other hand,’ was not so much unsaid as emblazoned across the table cloth in large capital letters. Illuminated.

Parker had undoubtedly not always been Gordon’s greatest fan, but even for him, this hostility was somewhat overcooked. Gordon decided a new tack was needed.

“So, did they bite?”

“Did what bite?”

“The fish. On your fishing weekend. The East Anglesey Fishing and Hunting weekend thing. Or did you shoot them instead?”

Parker grew even more sniffy, if that was at all possible.

“There was a lamentable lack of bites.”

“Came home empty-handed, huh? Never mind. Hey, next time, ask me along. I’m great at fishing. I mean, I always let them go again, but I’ve never yet not scored.”

This was playing with fire using paper tongs and sulphur balls, and Gordon was relieved when Parker didn’t strike a match.

“I believe I can arrange for m’lady’s breakfast without supervision.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Gordon picked up two of the muffins, sticky things with bits of raspberry protruding from them. “But this is more by way of my breakfast. Lady Penelope is still rocking the zees.”

“H’I see.”

“So I’ll be grabbing some coffee and some muffins and getting out of your hair.” He filled his mug from the pot conveniently placed on the stove. ”I think Sherbert is after a top-up, too.”

“Gawd help us.” Parker shifted the Eye of Sauron to Sherbert, who was sitting with amplified expectations by Gordon’s feet. “Of course ‘e is. Shall I ‘eat it for him? Or can he cope with aw nat-yur-el?”

Gordon tilted a quizzical look towards Sherbert.

“I think he’d approve of a heated muffin. With some kibble on top.”

Sighing, Parker folded his paper with the air of an injured samurai sheathing his sword.

“If it’s not one, it’s the other,” he muttered, an oracular utterance that Gordon and Sherbert both cheerfully ignored. Slowly he plated two warm muffins on a gold-leaf lipped saucer, added some dog food from a sealed container on the bench, and proffered it with studied ceremony to Sherbert – who sniffed it, then took one muffin gingerly in his mouth before trotting off upstairs.

“I better keep an eye on him. Right?” Gordon hurried along behind, his own muffins firmly in hand, mug of coffee steaming. “Hate to see him getting into mischief. Or waking Pe – Lady Penelope.”

“No,” said Parker, darkly, “we wouldn’t want that.” _ Given your salacious and debauched proclivities_ again went unsaid.

Gordon made it to the first landing and looked around for the little dog. Sherbert was nowhere to be seen. Gordon wandered into the first room – a lounge room, decorated in pink, featuring a large mural of Penelope walking Sherbert. In the middle of the room to his right was a large fireplace featuring an artificial fire that he thankfully flick started, watching the cunning hologram grow alongside a commensurate growth in warmth.

Carefully he set the muffins down on a low coffee table, then took a long, savouring sip of the coffee. He reflected, ruefully, that a poor fishing expedition could really ruin Parker’s mood. He’d have to give him some tips. But a rude Parker was incapable of affecting his own well-being. Not when one hunger was about to be sated, and the deeper one would be met within the hour. He considered putting his feet up on the table and decided it was worth it. One bare foot was placed on the gold filigree table top, followed by another. He wriggled his toes luxuriously in the heat from the fire, and sighed in pure contentment.

“Gordon? Come in?”

“Shit!” His coffee spilled as Scott’s avatar suddenly appeared directly in front of him from where his own communicator lay open on the table top. The sudden irruption of his brother combined with his memory of exactly why the communicator had been abandoned on that particular spot last night led him to fumble the cup. “Ouch. Shit, Scott give me some warning!”

Scott looked irritated – which, to be fair, was a pretty constant look these days – and huffed loudly as Gordon mopped ineffectually at the mess he’d made of his dressing gown.

“When you’re finished, there’s something I need to talk to you about. And it’s serious, Gordon, I need you to focus. Are you alone?”

Ah, so insulting _and_ grumpy. Great.

“I’m focused. And yeah, right now, I’m alone. What’s up?”

“You need to go check. Then close the door.”

Well, two could play at the sighing-game. Gordon let an epic sigh accompany him to the door, where he peered ostentatiously out to the empty corridor before closing it. He would have slammed it, except that he remembered at the last second that Penelope was still sleeping, so he closed it with what he hoped was a truly annoying over-careful flourish.

“Are you done?”

Gordon looked about him, then lifted a cushion to peer under it.

“Yeah, think so.” He plumped back onto the sofa, putting his feet back up on the table. “Fire away.”

Scott breathed in deeply, obviously controlling his temper. “First of all, I need you to promise me that this goes nowhere else. Not Penelope. Not Parker. No-one.”

“Sure.” Gordon crossed his heart then held his fingers up in a Scout’s honour gesture. “Dies with me.”

“I mean it, Gordon.”

“I get it, Scott.” He allowed a little of his own irritation to come out. “I know what Top Secret means. I won’t say anything.”

“To anyone, including anyone in International Rescue.”

That brought his feet off the table.

“What? What are you talking about, Scott? Not talk to – “

“Anyone. Gordon, listen. This is so important. No one can know about this. You’re the only one I can trust with it.”

A moment’s pause: then, “Bullshit.”

“Gordon – “

“No, it’s bullshit. Are you seriously telling me you can’t trust Virgil? John? Alan, for crying out loud? What about Grandma? She the real Mata Hari here?”

Scott’s expression didn’t change.

“I know, but this is important.”

A single digit offered vertically with maximum thrust was the response.

“Dammit, Gordon, it’s an order!”

“A what now?” Gordon cupped a hand behind his ear. “An order, sir? Sorry, sir, didn’t quite catch that, sir. I thought you might have just made a complete jackass out of yourself and pretended like International Rescue was some kind of military operation where you could give orders. Sir.”

Scott closed his eyes and blew out a long breath. When he looked at Gordon again, the tamped anger was gone, and there was only sadness.

“I’m sorry. I know, Gordon. Believe me. But I need you to do this. I need you to promise me. I’m asking this of you. Please.”

Well, shit.

He could resist authority without raising a sweat, would push back against bullying as a reflex. But a vulnerable request for help? That cut through to him, every time.

Annoyed with himself, he scrubbed his face with his hands before saying, “Gahhh. Fine. You win. I won’t tell anyone, ever, whatever Serious and Important Thing you’re about to lay on me.”

“Good. I – “

A scratching, followed by a short, sharp bark at the door, and Gordon was on his feet.

“Uh – hold that thought.” He hurried to the door and let a huffing Sherbert trot inside. “Sorry. He’ll wake Penelope if I don’t let him in. Yeah, good boy. You sit down by the fire. Good boy.”

When he checked back with Scott, the pleading in his eyes had been replaced by something rather more glinting.

“Okay, okay, we’re good.” Gordon settled himself again on the sofa, checked the level of remaining coffee, took a slurp and then raised his mug. “Carry on.”

“I’ve got something that might give us an advantage against Hamartia.”

And that was instantly sobering. The mug was lowered, and Gordon felt his whole body tense up, felt his mind sharpen into near-battle mode.

“What? Where?”

“Yeah, funny you should ask where. It’s off the island of Jan Mayen. A buoy, with a scanner on it that can detect the heat signature we captured on Nazca Plain. It’s got a range that will cover most of the northern hemisphere. If she gets airborne anywhere north of the equator, we’ve got her.”

“Wow.” He turned it over in his mind, liking everything about it. “How did you get the scanner?”

“Had it commissioned through Tracy Industries. Different components, different sections of the company. No one ever had a full blueprint, so I know it can’t be leaked from there.”

“Wow.” But this time it was Gordon’s voice that held sadness. “Guess this is how things are now. Can’t even trust our own company.”

“We can’t trust anyone.”

“Except me. Apparently.” Gordon frowned. “Why is that?”

Scott looked taken aback.

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t trust you?”

“No. ‘Course not. But why do you?”

“So I should trust you?”

“Yes.”

“There you go, then.”

Gordon blinked, shook his head.

“What are you talking about?”

“I trust you because I know you couldn’t betray us.”

“Which gets us back to my original statement – you can trust the others for the same reason.”

“Goddammit, Gordon. Why can’t you just accept a compliment?”

“Is that what it is? A compliment?”

“Sure.” Scott was sounding more and more agitated. “If someone told me they trusted me, I would take it as a compliment.”

“Not when it comes with a side-order of insult to my brothers and sister and grandma and genius, I don’t.”

Scott pinched the bridge of his nose, something that Gordon had come to call The Scott Manoeuvre in honour of the number of times he’d seen it. And, to be fair, caused it.

“Gordon, it’s simple. I want one other person to know about this, in case anything happens to me. I had to choose one of you. I chose you.”

This raised more alarming possibilities.

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“Nothing! It’s – it’s a redundancy measure, okay? A back up plan. Come on, Gordon, you understand strategy. I needed someone else as my failsafe.”

Which made some sort of sense. The fact that it was him and not, for one obvious and glaring example, Virgil, was still a little hinky. But Gordon could at last understand the general gist of things.

“Okay. So. Jan Mayen Island. That’s completely automated now. About as remote as you can get. How far off it is this buoy?”

“The buoy’s at about 100 kilometres due north, 70 degrees 60 minutes north, 8 degrees 32 minutes west. Yeah, not somewhere anyone is likely to bump into it. I really think this could be the start of bringing her down.”

Sherbert gave another whuff and decided he’d had enough of the fire. He got up and went back to the door, before turning to give Gordon an ‘I’m waiting. Don’t make me wait’ look.

“Hold on a sec.” Gordon dutifully went to let Sherbert out. “But go down to Parker. Don’t go and wake Penelope. Got it?”

He really was spending too much time with the dog. Although time spent with Sherbert inevitably meant time spent with Penelope, so there really was no such thing as too much time, at all. Sherbert appeared to get the right message, heading downstairs and not across the landing, so Gordon closed the door quietly and went back to where Scott was waiting.

“Alright. I’ll keep your secret, Scott. But I think you’re wrong.”

“Noted,” said Scott, drily. “So situation normal, then.”

“No.” It was a set-up for an easy line, but Gordon ignored it in favour of a harder truth. “No, normally I think you’re pretty good at the whole decision making thing. This time, you’re wrong.”

“I hope so.” And Scott’s voice sounded heavy with all kinds of regret and fear. For the first time, sympathy edged out annoyance, and Gordon softened his tone accordingly.

“Hey, Scott? You know we’re the good guys. That hasn’t changed.”

“I know. Yeah, I – thanks, Gordon. But remember. You cannot tell this to anyone. I really need your promise on this.”

Gordon sighed, expressively, but nodded.

“I promise. If it makes you happy, I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

Scott’s mouth flattened into a grim line.

“Nothing about this makes me happy. Except for the thought that we might finally have a way of tracking this woman down.”

“Roger that. Can I finish my breakfast now?”

“Sure. And I’ll finish supper. If I can.”

“Grandma cooked?”

“Is that what we’d call it?” The barest hint of a smile, and although it was a shadow of his usual high-wattage Scott Tracy dimple blowout, it warmed Gordon to see it, in a way he hadn’t realised he’d been missing. It made him offer a smile in return.

“Take care of yourself, Scotty.”

“Will do. Take care of yourself, too, Gordo.”

“Nah-uh. I’m taking care of Penelope. Much more fun.”

“Ugh. Too much information. You had to ruin it. Scott out.”

The avatar disappeared, leaving Gordon alone with his cold coffee and half eaten muffin.

The final exchange notwithstanding, there was so much that was wrong with that communication that he didn’t know where to start. His first thought was to contact Virgil and let him know, nut out some kind of course of action to knock some sense into their big brother. Then a chat with Penelope - after wishing her a _very_ good morning, of course – because she had a way of seeing through things that offered him a brand new perspective, every time.

Except – he’d promised.

And that promise had seemed to mean so much to Scott.

“Argghh.” He lay full length on the sofa and pulled a pillow over his face.

He’d promised. And he’d keep his promise, even though it burdened him with a knowledge of Scott he really wanted to share. Probably should share.

A few days. He was due to fly out tonight. He would keep an eye on Scott, watch him closely, and if there was anything else he could call out, he would. He’d get Grandma onto it, Virgil, Brains. If it really looked like Scott was having some sort of crisis, he wouldn’t let this promise hold him back.

And in the meantime – if this scanner did work… maybe bringing down Hamartia was the fastest way to get everyone back in their right minds.

“Gordon?”

Ah. That brought a real smile. His Lady was awake.

“At your service, m’lady,” he called out, and hurried out of the lounge room to be just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go the Tiges!!!!  
(AFL Grand Final tomorrow).


End file.
